The <em> element provides emphasis for the enclosed text.

Most browsers tend to render <em> in italics.

• Netscape 2, 3, 4, 6, 7
• Mozilla 1
• Firefox 1
• Internet Explorer 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
• Opera 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
• Safari 1
• WebTV/MSN TV
• AvantGo Palm OS
• AvantGo Windows CE
• HTML 3.2, 4.0
• XHTML 1.0: XHTML Text Module

• class (optional)
• dir (optional)
• id (optional)
• lang (optional)
• onclick (optional)
• ondblclick (optional)
• onkeydown (optional)
• onkeypress (optional)
• onkeyup (optional)
• onmousedown (optional)
• onmousemove (optional)
• onmouseout (optional)
• onmouseover (optional)
• onmouseup (optional)
• style (optional)
• title (optional)

CDATA Usually plain text. The following tags are valid within the <em> tag:
a, abbr, acronym, applet, b, basefont, bdo, big, br, button, cite, code, dfn, em, font, i, iframe, img, input, kbd, label, map, object, q, s, samp, script, select, small, span, strike, strong, sub, sup, textarea, tt, u, var

The <em> tag is valid within the following tags:
a, abbr, acronym, address, applet, b, bdo, big, blockquote, body, button, caption, center, cite, code, dd, del, dfn, div, dt, em, fieldset, font, form, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, i, iframe, ins, kbd, label, legend, li, noframes, noscript, object, p, pre, q, s, samp, small, span, strike, strong, sub, sup, td, th, tt, u, var

• standard emphasis

  This is <em>emphasized text</em>.

• Most browsers display the em tag in italics, but if you write something that must be italics (rather than emphasized), use CSS.

• <i></i>
• font-style
• Bold and Italics

Return to XHTML Element (HTML Tags) Library