<em>: The Emphasis element
Baseline Widely available
This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since July 2015.
The <em> HTML element marks text that has stress emphasis. The <em> element can be nested, with each level of nesting indicating a greater degree of emphasis.
Try it
Attributes
This element only includes the global attributes.
Usage notes
The <em> element is for words that have a stressed emphasis compared to surrounding text, which is often limited to a word or words of a sentence and affects the meaning of the sentence itself.
Typically this element is displayed in italic type. However, it should not be used to apply italic styling; use the CSS font-style property for that purpose. Use the <cite> element to mark the title of a work (book, play, song, etc.). Use the <i> element to mark text that is in an alternate tone or mood, which covers many common situations for italics such as scientific names or words in other languages. Use the <strong> element to mark text that has greater importance than surrounding text.
<i> vs. <em>
Some developers may be confused by how multiple elements seemingly produce similar visual results. <em> and <i> are a common example, since they both italicize text. What's the difference? Which should you use?
By default, the visual result is the same. However, the semantic meaning is different. The <em> element represents stress emphasis of its contents, while the <i> element represents text that is set off from the normal prose, such as a foreign word, fictional character thoughts, or when the text refers to the definition of a word instead of representing its semantic meaning. (The title of a work, such as the name of a book or movie, should use <cite>.)
This means the right one to use depends on the situation. Neither is for purely decorative purposes, that's what CSS styling is for.
Examples for <em> could be:
<p>Just <em>do</em> it already!</p>
<p>We <em>had</em> to do something about it.</p>
A person or software reading the text would pronounce the words in italics with an emphasis, using verbal stress.
Examples for <i> could be:
<p>The word <i>the</i> is an article.</p>
<p>The <i>Queen Mary</i> sailed last night.</p>
Here, there is no added emphasis or importance on the word "Queen Mary". It is merely indicated that the object in question is not a queen named Mary but a ship named "Queen Mary".
Examples
In this example, the <em> element is used to highlight an implicit or explicit contrast between two ingredient lists:
<p>
Ice cream is made with milk, sweetener, and cream. Frozen custard, on the
other hand, is made of milk, cream, sweetener, and <em>egg yolks</em>.
</p>
Result
Technical summary
| Content categories | Flow content, phrasing content, palpable content. |
|---|---|
| Permitted content | Phrasing content. |
| Tag omission | None, both the starting and ending tag are mandatory. |
| Permitted parents | Any element that accepts phrasing content. |
| Implicit ARIA role | emphasis |
| Permitted ARIA roles | Any |
| DOM interface |
HTMLElement Up to Gecko 1.9.2 (Firefox 4)
inclusive, Firefox implements the
HTMLSpanElement interface for this element.
|
Specifications
| Specification |
|---|
| HTML Standard # the-em-element |
Browser compatibility
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