HTML: The Markup Language

An HTML language reference

Unofficial Editor’s Draft 24 August 2011

Editors:: Michael[tm] Smith <sideshowbarker@gmail.com>

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Abstract

This non-normative reference describes the HTML markup language and provides details to help producers of HTML content create documents that conform to the language. It is intended to complement the normative conformance criteria defined in the HTML5: A vocabulary and associated APIs for HTML and XHTML specification, as well as information in related deliverables published by the HTML Working Group and from other sources. By design, this reference does not describe related APIs in detail, nor attempt to explain how implementations that are consumers of HTML content are meant to process documents (those areas are covered by the HTML5 specification itself), nor attempt to also be a tutorial or “how to” authoring guide.

Status of this Document

This document is the 24 August 2011 Editor’s Draft of HTML: The Markup Language. If you’d like to comment on this document, the preferred means for commenting is to submit your comments through the HTML Working Group bugzilla database, with the Component field set to HTML5: The Markup Language. Alternatively, you can send comments by e-mail to public-html-comments@w3.org (archived).

Instability and incompleteness of this document

This document is a working draft — all parts of it remain subject to significant change or removal, and some parts are currently incomplete; in particular, many elements currently lack complete documentation in the following subsections:

Examples: The documentation for each element ideally have at least one conformant example and at least one non-conformant example.
Details: The purpose of this subsection is to provide, where needed, additional details about the semantics of the element and its attributes.
Additional constraints and admonitions: This purpose of this subsection is to provide, where needed, additional document-conformance constraints and usage admonitions for the element and its attributes (in addition to those already documented in the Permitted content, Permitted attributes, Permitted parent elements, and Tag omission subsections).