<span>: The Content Span element
The <span>
HTML element is a generic inline container for phrasing content, which does not inherently represent anything. It can be used to group elements for styling purposes (using the class
or id
attributes), or because they share attribute values, such as lang
. It should be used only when no other semantic element is appropriate. <span>
is very much like a {{HTMLElement("div")}} element, but {{HTMLElement("div")}} is a block-level element whereas a <span>
is an inline-level element.
{{EmbedInteractiveExample("pages/tabbed/span.html", "tabbed-shorter")}}
Attributes
This element only includes the global attributes.
Example
Example 1
HTML
<p><span>Some text</span></p>
Result
{{EmbedLiveSample('Example_1')}}
Example 2
HTML
<li>
<span>
<a href="portfolio.html" target="_blank">See my portfolio</a>
</span>
</li>
CSS
li span {
background: gold;
}
Result
{{EmbedLiveSample('Example_2')}}
Technical summary
Content categories | Flow content, phrasing content. |
---|---|
Permitted content | Phrasing content. |
Tag omission | None, both the starting and ending tag are mandatory. |
Permitted parents | Any element that accepts phrasing content, or any element that accepts flow content. |
Implicit ARIA role | No corresponding role |
Permitted ARIA roles | Any |
DOM interface | {{domxref("HTMLSpanElement")}} |
Specifications
Browser compatibility
See also
- HTML {{HTMLElement("div")}} element