Help:HTML in wikitext

For many HTML elements, more convenient wikitext code is available, see Help:Wiki markup, however there are some situations in which the HTML alternative is useful, for example creating a link to a particular element of a table.

Permitted HTML
The following HTML elements are currently permitted:


 * &lt;abbr&gt; : An abbreviation (e.g., Abbr., HTML )
 * &lt;b&gt; : Text stylistically offset from other text without conveying extra importance
 * &lt;big&gt; : Indicates representation in a larger font size
 * &lt;blockquote&gt; : A section of quoted material,"usually presented as an indented block," typically for long quotes
 * &lt;br&gt; : A line break in the middle of text such as poetry or addresses
 * &lt;caption&gt; :
 * &lt;center&gt; (deprecated) : Indicates presentation as a block-level center-aligned division
 * &lt;cite&gt; : Title of a work (e.g., )
 * &lt;code&gt; :
 * &lt;dd&gt; : A valuein a  -marked association list
 * &lt;del&gt; : Indicates a deletion
 * &lt;dfn&gt; : Marks a defined term : a term that is defined in the nearby text.
 * &lt;div&gt; : A division of text, usually presented as a block
 * &lt;dl&gt; : An association list of names corresponding to values (e.g., terms and definitions, or properties and data)
 * &lt;dt&gt; : A namein a  -marked association list</dd></dl>
 * &lt;em&gt; : A tag for stressing emphasis
 * &lt;font&gt; (deprecated) : Indicates presentation with a <font color="green" size="-1" face="Courier">particular font color, typeface and/or size.
 * &lt;h1&gt; - &lt;h6&gt; : Section headings at different levels.
 * &lt;hr&gt; : A paragraph-level thematic break such as a transition to a different topic Usually represented by a horizontal line.
 * &lt;i&gt; : Text which is represented in an alternate voice or mood, usually represented by italics
 * &lt;ins&gt; : Indicates an insertion
 * &lt;kbd&gt; : Indicates text to be entered by the user.
 * &lt;li&gt; : <li>A list item in ordered (ol)</li><li>or unordered (ul) lists</li>
 * &lt;ol&gt; :<ol><li>An ordered...</li><li>(enumerated) list</li></ol>
 * &lt;p&gt; : Indicates a paragraph or paragraph break. (Paragraphs are usually indicated by Wiki markup.)
 * &lt;pre&gt; : Represents a block of pre-formatted text
 * &lt;rb&gt; (deprecated) : formerly used to mark base text in a ruby annotation.
 * &lt;rp&gt; : Marks Ruby parentheses, an alternative for Ruby annotation: <ruby style="font-size:1.2em;">汉<rp>(</rp><rt>hàn</rt><rp>)</rp>字<rp>(</rp><rt>zì</rt><rp>)</rp> may be rendered as 汉 (hàn) 字 (zì)
 * &lt;rt&gt; : Marks a <ruby style="font-size:1.2em;">汉<rt>Ruby </rt>字<rt>annotation</rt>
 * &lt;ruby&gt; : A Ruby annotation: <ruby style="font-size:1.2em;">汉<rt>hàn</rt>字<rt>zì </rt>
 * &lt;samp&gt; : Represents a sample output, such as from a program or script.
 * &lt;s&gt; or &lt;strike&gt; (the latter deprecated) : Indicates text that is no longer valid or relevant
 * &lt;small&gt; : Indicates fine print such as legal disclaimers in advertising
 * &lt;span&gt; : A division of text, usually presented inline with surrounding text
 * &lt;strong&gt; : Stresses strong importance, usually presented in bold
 * &lt;sub&gt; : Indicates asubscript
 * &lt;sup&gt; : Indicates asuperscript
 * &lt;table&gt; :
 * &lt;td&gt; :
 * &lt;th&gt; :
 * &lt;tr&gt; :
 * &lt;tt&gt; (deprecated): Indicates presentation in a <tt>fixed-width font</tt>
 * &lt;u&gt; : Indicates a non-textual annotation, typically represented as underlining
 * &lt;ul&gt;
 * <ul><li>An unordered...</li><li>(bulleted) list</li></ul>


 * &lt;var&gt; : Indicates a variable
 * &lt;!-- ... --&gt; (will be stripped during processing) :

Anchors
HTML tags allow an  attribute that can be referenced in one's user style CSS, and allows the element to be used as link target.

However, the anchor element  is not allowed, so the wikitext is treated like the wikitext and is therefore displayed as "<a href="http://meta.wikimedia.org/">Main Page</a>"

which is unlikely to be what the editor intended. Instead of using the anchor element (&lt;a&gt;) the wiki markup for external reference is required (enclosed in square brackets with the URL separated from the contents by a single space): displays as "Main Page"

The following excerpt from Sanitizer.php additionally shows which attributes are allowed.

Tags
is a generic inline text container.

is a similar tag which is deprecated (should not be used) in favor of  .''

For example produces the same result as

See also and m:Help:Text color.

It's pointless to combine the legacy tag <tt>&lt;font&gt;</tt> with inline CSS; legacy browsers would ignore the CSS, while modern browsers support <tt>&lt;span&gt;</tt> (see above).

Note that in most cases, one can use a more descriptive tag, for instance,  to indicate an important piece of text, or   (subject to the same things as strong) to indicate an emphasized piece of text.

This not only draws the user's attention to the text, but can also alert those who are using nonvisual browsers or have sight impairments, etc. to the fact that that is emphasized text.

Using as a link target
The standard way of providing a named anchor as an invisible target (i.e. ) doesn't work (since all   tags are converted), and an alternative suggested by the W3C, , produces an "[Edit]" link.

However,  does produce a target that can be the destination of a link. (This is silently changed to ). This is the method used by the anchor template. Note that it doesn't work everywhere; for instance, in a table, it has to be inside a cell before some browsers will jump to it properly.

This technique can be used to produce immutable links from one article to a section of another, which continue to work even if the section name is changed by someone who does not realize that another article links there. For example,.

is a generic block container. Rules:
 * should be followed by a newline
 * should be preceded by a newline
 * followed by text on the same line, two newlines and text before  on the same line should be avoided (because the two newlines only produce a space)

HTML comment
Using : The "Remove comments" option of ExpandTemplates selects whether comments are removed, not just in the final result but throughout the expansion process. This affects the result of parser functions: a comment in the expression of #expr or in the condition of #ifexpr gives an error message unless "Remove comments" is on, and comments affect #if and #ifeq.
 * t
 * " gives "&lt;!--t-->start-pqr-end", producing HTML code without the comment.

Example:

Wikitext:

Result of normal expansion, and of ExpandTemplates with "Remove comments" on:

Result of full substitution, and of ExpandTemplates with "Remove comments" off:

0

0

1

Therefore it is typically better to avoid comments in these places, and to put the comment before or after the parser function.

In the case of nested parser functions, to avoid having to put the comments outside the whole, an alternative is. In the case of substitution of the parser function, "void" has to be substituted too, e.g. in a template allowing multi-level substitution we can put.

Another alternative is making the comment the name of a parameter (in the likely case that it is unused), with the empty string as default, e.g. or, to recognize the intention, use pseudo comment tags:, or real ones, if the empty string is not used as parameter:.

See also.

Attributes
Most tags can have a <tt>style</tt> attribute. For example produces: <blockquote style="border:1px dotted gray; padding-left:20px"> This is red text.

Most tags can have classes and IDs. They can be used in conjunction with stylesheets to give a piece of text a descriptive class (or unique identifier) and to refer to that in a stylesheet. For example

Example infobox Produces the box which floats on the right because <tt>infobox</tt> class is already defined in local Mediawiki:Common.css. <br style=clear:all>

Classes and IDs can also be used by Javascript code, for example see how {Link FA} works in enwiki.

Classes are also widely used to create microformats.

Another attribute example is <tt>title</tt>, for example used in H:title template: note the hover box over "20000 ft" <blockquote style="border:1px dotted gray; padding-left:20px"> "a height of 20000 ft above sea level"

Pre
tags work as the combination of  and the standard HTML   tag: the content will preformatted, and it will not be parsed, but shown as in the wikitext source. If you want preformatted but parsed text, use a space in the beginning of the line instead. For example,

This word is bold. This word is bold. will render as

This word is bold. This word is bold.

Comments
HTML comments in the wikitext will not appear in the HTML code at all.

Headers
Headers ( ... ) will be treated in a similar way as wikicode headers:

sample header

Note that it appears in the table of contents and has an accompanying edit link. There are some minor differences though: editing such a section won't prefill the edit summary, and the browser won't jump to the beginning of the section when saving the page. Thus, you should use the wikitext equivalents instead.

Exceptions
In some pages in the MediaWiki namespace (typically the short messages like button labels) HTML does not work, and e.g. &lt;span id=abc&gt; produces the HTML &amp;lt;span id=abc&amp;gt; rendered by the browser as &lt;span id=abc&gt;. Some others are interpreted as pure HTML (thus any tag can be used, but wikicode won't be transformed to HTML).

User CSS and JS pages (see Help:User style) are interpreted as if inside a  block. From MW 1.11 this also goes for sitewide CSS/JS; in earlier versions, you have to manually add <tt> /* */ </tt> to the beginning and <tt> /* */ </tt> to the end of those pages to avoid strange rendering.

Validation
The MediaWiki software attempts to catch HTML errors, but it does not catch all of them. If you use HTML in wikitext, it is helpful to verify it with the W3C Markup Validation Service.