WebHints: Text Modifiers

Inline Text Modification

Text can be modified by surrounding it with a modification element in the following manner:

<THING>text to be modified</THING>

Modifiers can be divided into two groups: those that provide emphasis for inline (no line breaks) text, and those that provide emphasis for multi-line text. Here is the complete list of inline modifiers.

 Ordinary emphasis. 
<CITE> A citation. </CITE>
<DFN> Defining use of term. </DFN>
 Stronger emphasis. 
<SAMP> Literal characters. </SAMP>
<STRIKE> ~~Struck out text.~~ </STRIKE>
<CODE> Inline program code. </CODE>
<KBD> Keyboard input. </TT>
<VAR> Program variables. </VAR>
 Bold text. 
 Italics text. 
<TT> TT-font text. </TT>
 Underline. 
<ADDRESS>
To give your address.
</ADDRESS>

HTML+ proposes the following:

<ARG> Computer command arg. </ARG>
<ABBREV> An abbreviation. </ABBREV>
<CMD> Computer command name. </CMD>
<ACRONYM> Stronger emphasis. </ACRONYM>
<PERSON> A person. </PERSON>
<Q> Short inline quote. </Q>
<S> ~~Struck out text.~~ </S>
 _Subscript. 
 ^Superscript.

Netscape Navigator also provides the extension:

<BLINK> Blinking text. </BLINK>

Block Text Modification

Other constructs can be used to format whole blocks of text. To include text verbatim (preserving spacing and line breaks and setting in TT font), use:

<PRE>

Preformatted multi-line text.
This is the second line.
This is the third line.

</PRE>

The WIDTH attribute can be used to hint at a wrapping width of the preformatted text. It often defaults to 80.

To format a block of text as a highlighted quote:

<BLOCKQUOTE>

This is a block quote. Most browsers will indent this an cast it in italics but this is not compulsary. Formally, a block quote cannot contain text, but can only contain a construct that can contain text. So it's a good idea to stick a paragraph marker at the start of the block.

</BLOCKQUOTE>