<span>: The Content Span 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 <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 <div>
element, but <div>
is a block-level element whereas a <span>
is an inline-level element.
Try it
Attributes
This element only includes the global attributes.
Example
Example 1
HTML
<p><span>Some text</span></p>
Result
Example 2
HTML
<li>
<span>
<a href="portfolio.html" target="_blank">See my portfolio</a>
</span>
</li>
CSS
li span {
background: gold;
}
Result
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 |
HTMLSpanElement
|
Specifications
Specification |
---|
HTML # the-span-element |
Browser compatibility
Report problems with this compatibility data on GitHubdesktop | mobile | |||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
span |
Legend
Tip: you can click/tap on a cell for more information.
- Full support
- Full support
See also
- HTML
<div>
element