The HTML <head>
element contains machine-readable information (metadata) about the document, like its title, scripts, and style sheets.
Note: <head>
primarily holds information for machine processing, not human-readability. For human-visible information, like top-level headings and listed authors, see the <header>
element.
Content categories | None. |
---|---|
Permitted content |
If the document is an Otherwise, one or more elements of metadata content where exactly one is a |
Tag omission | The start tag may be omitted if the first thing inside the <head> element is an element.The end tag may be omitted if the first thing following the <head> element is not a space character or a comment. |
Permitted parents | An <html> element, as its first child. |
Implicit ARIA role | No corresponding role |
Permitted ARIA roles | No role permitted |
DOM interface | HTMLHeadElement |
Attributes
This element includes the global attributes.
profile
- The URIs of one or more metadata profiles, separated by white space.
Example
<!doctype html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Document title</title>
</head>
</html>
Notes
HTML5-compliant browsers automatically create a <head>
element if its tags are omitted in the markup. This auto-creation is not guaranteed in ancient browsers.
Specifications
Specification | Status | Comment |
---|---|---|
HTML Living Standard The definition of '<head>' in that specification. |
Living Standard | No change from latest shapshot |
HTML5 The definition of '<head>' in that specification. |
Recommendation | Obsoleted profile |
HTML 4.01 Specification The definition of '<head>' in that specification. |
Recommendation |
Browser compatibility
BCD tables only load in the browser
The compatibility table in this page is generated from structured data. If you'd like to contribute to the data, please check out https://github.com/mdn/browser-compat-data and send us a pull request.
See also
- Elements that can be used inside the
<head>
: