HTML Standard, Developer's Edition

In conforming documents, there is only one body element. The document.body IDL attribute provides scripts with easy access to a document's body element.

Thus, for example, a bubbling error event dispatched on a child of the body element of a Document would first trigger the onerror event handler content attributes of that element, then that of the root html element, and only then would it trigger the onerror event handler content attribute on the body element. This is because the event would bubble from the target, to the body, to the html, to the Document, to the Window, and the event handler on the body is watching the Window not the body. A regular event listener attached to the body using addEventListener(), however, would be run when the event bubbled through the body and not when it reaches the Window object.

This page updates an indicator to show whether or not the user is online:

<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<html lang="en">
 <head>
  <title>Online or offline?</title>
  <script>
   function update(online) {
     document.getElementById('status').textContent =
       online ? 'Online' : 'Offline';
   }
  </script>
 </head>
 <body ononline="update(true)"
       onoffline="update(false)"
       onload="update(navigator.onLine)">
  <p>You are: <span id="status">(Unknown)</span></p>
 </body>
</html>

4.3.2 The article element

The article element represents a complete, or self-contained, composition in a document, page, application, or site and that is, in principle, independently distributable or reusable, e.g. in syndication. This could be a forum post, a magazine or newspaper article, a blog entry, a user-submitted comment, an interactive widget or gadget, or any other independent item of content.

When article elements are nested, the inner article elements represent articles that are in principle related to the contents of the outer article. For instance, a blog entry on a site that accepts user-submitted comments could represent the comments as article elements nested within the article element for the blog entry.

Author information associated with an article element (q.v. the address element) does not apply to nested article elements.

When used specifically with content to be redistributed in syndication, the article element is similar in purpose to the entry element in Atom. [ATOM]

The schema.org microdata vocabulary can be used to provide the publication date for an article element, using one of the CreativeWork subtypes.

When the main content of the page (i.e. excluding footers, headers, navigation blocks, and sidebars) is all one single self-contained composition, that content may be marked with an article, but it is technically redundant in that case (since it's self-evident that the page is a single composition, as it is a single document).

This example shows a blog post using the article element, with some schema.org annotations:

<article itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/BlogPosting">
 <header>
  <h1 itemprop="headline">The Very First Rule of Life</h1>
  <p><time itemprop="datePublished" datetime="2009-10-09">3 days ago</time></p>
  <link itemprop="url" href="?comments=0">
 </header>
 <p>If there's a microphone anywhere near you, assume it's hot and
 sending whatever you're saying to the world. Seriously.</p>
 <p>...</p>
 <footer>
  <a itemprop="discussionUrl" href="?comments=1">Show comments...</a>
 </footer>
</article>

Here is that same blog post, but showing some of the comments:

<article itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/BlogPosting">
 <header>
  <h1 itemprop="headline">The Very First Rule of Life</h1>
  <p><time itemprop="datePublished" datetime="2009-10-09">3 days ago</time></p>
  <link itemprop="url" href="?comments=0">
 </header>
 <p>If there's a microphone anywhere near you, assume it's hot and
 sending whatever you're saying to the world. Seriously.</p>
 <p>...</p>
 <section>
  <h1>Comments</h1>
  <article itemprop="comment" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/UserComments" id="c1">
   <link itemprop="url" href="#c1">
   <footer>
    <p>Posted by: <span itemprop="creator" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Person">
     <span itemprop="name">George Washington</span>
    </span></p>
    <p><time itemprop="commentTime" datetime="2009-10-10">15 minutes ago</time></p>
   </footer>
   <p>Yeah! Especially when talking about your lobbyist friends!</p>
  </article>
  <article itemprop="comment" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/UserComments" id="c2">
   <link itemprop="url" href="#c2">
   <footer>
    <p>Posted by: <span itemprop="creator" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Person">
     <span itemprop="name">George Hammond</span>
    </span></p>
    <p><time itemprop="commentTime" datetime="2009-10-10">5 minutes ago</time></p>
   </footer>
   <p>Hey, you have the same first name as me.</p>
  </article>
 </section>
</article>

Notice the use of footer to give the information for each comment (such as who wrote it and when): the footer element can appear at the start of its section when appropriate, such as in this case. (Using header in this case wouldn't be wrong either; it's mostly a matter of authoring preference.)

In this example, article elements are used to host widgets on a portal page. The widgets are implemented as customized built-in elements in order to get specific styling and scripted behavior.

<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<html lang=en>
<title>eHome Portal</title>
<script src="/scripts/widgets.js"></script>
<link rel=stylesheet href="/styles/main.css">
<article is="stock-widget">
 <h1>Stocks</h1>
 <table>
  <thead> <tr> <th> Stock <th> Value <th> Delta
  <tbody> <template> <tr> <td> <td> <td> </template>
 </table>
 <p> <input type=button value="Refresh" onclick="this.parentElement.refresh()">
</article>
<article is="news-widget">
 <h1>News</h1>
 <ul>
  <template>
   <li>
    <p><img> <strong></strong>
    <p>
  </template>
 </ul>
 <p> <input type=button value="Refresh" onclick="this.parentElement.refresh()">
</article>

4.3.3 The section element

The section element represents a generic section of a document or application. A section, in this context, is a thematic grouping of content, typically with a heading.

Examples of sections would be chapters, the various tabbed pages in a tabbed dialog box, or the numbered sections of a thesis. A web site's home page could be split into sections for an introduction, news items, and contact information.

Authors are encouraged to use the article element instead of the section element when it would make sense to syndicate the contents of the element.

The section element is not a generic container element. When an element is needed only for styling purposes or as a convenience for scripting, authors are encouraged to use the div element instead. A general rule is that the section element is appropriate only if the element's contents would be listed explicitly in the document's outline.

In the following example, we see an article (part of a larger web page) about apples, containing two short sections.

<article>
 <hgroup>
  <h1>Apples</h1>
  <h2>Tasty, delicious fruit!</h2>
 </hgroup>
 <p>The apple is the pomaceous fruit of the apple tree.</p>
 <section>
  <h1>Red Delicious</h1>
  <p>These bright red apples are the most common found in many
  supermarkets.</p>
 </section>
 <section>
  <h1>Granny Smith</h1>
  <p>These juicy, green apples make a great filling for
  apple pies.</p>
 </section>
</article>

Notice how the use of section means that the author can use h1 elements throughout, without having to worry about whether a particular section is at the top level, the second level, the third level, and so on.

Here is a graduation programme with two sections, one for the list of people graduating, and one for the description of the ceremony. (The markup in this example features an uncommon style sometimes used to minimize the amount of inter-element whitespace.)

<!DOCTYPE Html>
<Html Lang=En
 ><Head
   ><Title
     >Graduation Ceremony Summer 2022</Title
   ></Head
 ><Body
   ><H1
     >Graduation</H1
   ><Section
     ><H1
       >Ceremony</H1
     ><P
       >Opening Procession</P
     ><P
       >Speech by Validactorian</P
     ><P
       >Speech by Class President</P
     ><P
       >Presentation of Diplomas</P
     ><P
       >Closing Speech by Headmaster</P
   ></Section
   ><Section
     ><H1
       >Graduates</H1
     ><Ul
       ><Li
         >Molly Carpenter</Li
       ><Li
         >Anastasia Luccio</Li
       ><Li
         >Ebenezar McCoy</Li
       ><Li
         >Karrin Murphy</Li
       ><Li
         >Thomas Raith</Li
       ><Li
         >Susan Rodriguez</Li
     ></Ul
   ></Section
 ></Body
></Html>

In this example, a book author has marked up some sections as chapters and some as appendices, and uses CSS to style the headers in these two classes of section differently.

<style>
 section { border: double medium; margin: 2em; }
 section.chapter h1 { font: 2em Roboto, Helvetica Neue, sans-serif; }
 section.appendix h1 { font: small-caps 2em Roboto, Helvetica Neue, sans-serif; }
</style>
<header>
 <hgroup>
  <h1>My Book</h1>
  <h2>A sample with not much content</h2>
 </hgroup>
 <p><small>Published by Dummy Publicorp Ltd.</small></p>
</header>
<section class="chapter">
 <h1>My First Chapter</h1>
 <p>This is the first of my chapters. It doesn't say much.</p>
 <p>But it has two paragraphs!</p>
</section>
<section class="chapter">
 <h1>It Continues: The Second Chapter</h1>
 <p>Bla dee bla, dee bla dee bla. Boom.</p>
</section>
<section class="chapter">
 <h1>Chapter Three: A Further Example</h1>
 <p>It's not like a battle between brightness and earthtones would go
 unnoticed.</p>
 <p>But it might ruin my story.</p>
</section>
<section class="appendix">
 <h1>Appendix A: Overview of Examples</h1>
 <p>These are demonstrations.</p>
</section>
<section class="appendix">
 <h1>Appendix B: Some Closing Remarks</h1>
 <p>Hopefully this long example shows that you <em>can</em> style
 sections, so long as they are used to indicate actual sections.</p>
</section>

4.3.4 The nav element

The nav element represents a section of a page that links to other pages or to parts within the page: a section with navigation links.

Not all groups of links on a page need to be in a nav element — the element is primarily intended for sections that consist of major navigation blocks. In particular, it is common for footers to have a short list of links to various pages of a site, such as the terms of service, the home page, and a copyright page. The element alone is sufficient for such cases; while a nav element can be used in such cases, it is usually unnecessary.

User agents (such as screen readers) that are targeted at users who can benefit from navigation information being omitted in the initial rendering, or who can benefit from navigation information being immediately available, can use this element as a way to determine what content on the page to initially skip or provide on request (or both).

In the following example, there are two nav elements, one for primary navigation around the site, and one for secondary navigation around the page itself.

<body>
 <h1>The Wiki Center Of Exampland</h1>
 <nav>
  <ul>
   <li><a href="/">Home</a></li>
   <li><a href="/events">Current Events</a></li>
   ...more...
  </ul>
 </nav>
 <article>
  <header>
   <h1>Demos in Exampland</h1>
   <p>Written by A. N. Other.</p>
  </header>
  <nav>
   <ul>
    <li><a href="#public">Public demonstrations</a></li>
    <li><a href="#destroy">Demolitions</a></li>
    ...more...
   </ul>
  </nav>
  <div>
   <section id="public">
    <h1>Public demonstrations</h1>
    <p>...more...</p>
   </section>
   <section id="destroy">
    <h1>Demolitions</h1>
    <p>...more...</p>
   </section>
   ...more...
  </div>
  <footer>
   <p><a href="?edit">Edit</a> | <a href="?delete">Delete</a> | <a href="?Rename">Rename</a></p>
  </footer>
 </article>
 <footer>
  <p><small>© copyright 1998 Exampland Emperor</small></p>
 </footer>
</body>

In the following example, the page has several places where links are present, but only one of those places is considered a navigation section.

<body itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Blog">
 <header>
  <h1>Wake up sheeple!</h1>
  <p><a href="news.html">News</a> -
     <a href="blog.html">Blog</a> -
     <a href="forums.html">Forums</a></p>
  <p>Last Modified: <span itemprop="dateModified">2009-04-01</span></p>
  <nav>
   <h1>Navigation</h1>
   <ul>
    <li><a href="articles.html">Index of all articles</a></li>
    <li><a href="today.html">Things sheeple need to wake up for today</a></li>
    <li><a href="successes.html">Sheeple we have managed to wake</a></li>
   </ul>
  </nav>
 </header>
 <main>
  <article itemprop="blogPosts" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/BlogPosting">
   <header>
    <h1 itemprop="headline">My Day at the Beach</h1>
   </header>
   <div itemprop="articleBody">
    <p>Today I went to the beach and had a lot of fun.</p>
    ...more content...
   </div>
   <footer>
    <p>Posted <time itemprop="datePublished" datetime="2009-10-10">Thursday</time>.</p>
   </footer>
  </article>
  ...more blog posts...
 </main>
 <footer>
  <p>Copyright ©
   <span itemprop="copyrightYear">2010</span>
   <span itemprop="copyrightHolder">The Example Company</span>
  </p>
  <p><a href="about.html">About</a> -
     <a href="policy.html">Privacy Policy</a> -
     <a href="contact.html">Contact Us</a></p>
 </footer>
</body>

You can also see microdata annotations in the above example that use the schema.org vocabulary to provide the publication date and other metadata about the blog post.

A nav element doesn't have to contain a list, it can contain other kinds of content as well. In this navigation block, links are provided in prose:

<nav>
 <h1>Navigation</h1>
 <p>You are on my home page. To the north lies <a href="/blog">my
 blog</a>, from whence the sounds of battle can be heard. To the east
 you can see a large mountain, upon which many <a
 href="/school">school papers</a> are littered. Far up thus mountain
 you can spy a little figure who appears to be me, desperately
 scribbling a <a href="/school/thesis">thesis</a>.</p>
 <p>To the west are several exits. One fun-looking exit is labeled <a
 href="https://games.example.com/">"games"</a>. Another more
 boring-looking exit is labeled <a
 href="https://isp.example.net/">ISP™</a>.</p>
 <p>To the south lies a dark and dank <a href="/about">contacts
 page</a>. Cobwebs cover its disused entrance, and at one point you
 see a rat run quickly out of the page.</p>
</nav>

In this example, nav is used in an email application, to let the user switch folders:

<p><input type=button value="Compose" onclick="compose()"></p>
<nav>
 <h1>Folders</h1>
 <ul>
  <li> <a href="/inbox" onclick="return openFolder(this.href)">Inbox</a> <span class=count></span>
  <li> <a href="/sent" onclick="return openFolder(this.href)">Sent</a>
  <li> <a href="/drafts" onclick="return openFolder(this.href)">Drafts</a>
  <li> <a href="/trash" onclick="return openFolder(this.href)">Trash</a>
  <li> <a href="/customers" onclick="return openFolder(this.href)">Customers</a>
 </ul>
</nav>

4.3.5 The aside element

The aside element represents a section of a page that consists of content that is tangentially related to the content around the aside element, and which could be considered separate from that content. Such sections are often represented as sidebars in printed typography.

The element can be used for typographical effects like pull quotes or sidebars, for advertising, for groups of nav elements, and for other content that is considered separate from the main content of the page.

It's not appropriate to use the aside element just for parentheticals, since those are part of the main flow of the document.

The following example shows how an aside is used to mark up background material on Switzerland in a much longer news story on Europe.

<aside>
 <h1>Switzerland</h1>
 <p>Switzerland, a land-locked country in the middle of geographic
 Europe, has not joined the geopolitical European Union, though it is
 a signatory to a number of European treaties.</p>
</aside>

The following example shows how an aside is used to mark up a pull quote in a longer article.

...

<p>He later joined a large company, continuing on the same work.
<q>I love my job. People ask me what I do for fun when I'm not at
work. But I'm paid to do my hobby, so I never know what to
answer. Some people wonder what they would do if they didn't have to
work... but I know what I would do, because I was unemployed for a
year, and I filled that time doing exactly what I do now.</q></p>

<aside>
 <q> People ask me what I do for fun when I'm not at work. But I'm
 paid to do my hobby, so I never know what to answer. </q>
</aside>

<p>Of course his work — or should that be hobby? —
isn't his only passion. He also enjoys other pleasures.</p>

...

The following extract shows how aside can be used for blogrolls and other side content on a blog:

<body>
 <header>
  <h1>My wonderful blog</h1>
  <p>My tagline</p>
 </header>
 <aside>
  <!-- this aside contains two sections that are tangentially related
  to the page, namely, links to other blogs, and links to blog posts
  from this blog -->
  <nav>
   <h1>My blogroll</h1>
   <ul>
    <li><a href="https://blog.example.com/">Example Blog</a>
   </ul>
  </nav>
  <nav>
   <h1>Archives</h1>
   <ol reversed>
    <li><a href="/last-post">My last post</a>
    <li><a href="/first-post">My first post</a>
   </ol>
  </nav>
 </aside>
 <aside>
  <!-- this aside is tangentially related to the page also, it
  contains twitter messages from the blog author -->
  <h1>Twitter Feed</h1>
  <blockquote cite="https://twitter.example.net/t31351234">
   I'm on vacation, writing my blog.
  </blockquote>
  <blockquote cite="https://twitter.example.net/t31219752">
   I'm going to go on vacation soon.
  </blockquote>
 </aside>
 <article>
  <!-- this is a blog post -->
  <h1>My last post</h1>
  <p>This is my last post.</p>
  <footer>
   <p><a href="/last-post" rel=bookmark>Permalink</a>
  </footer>
 </article>
 <article>
  <!-- this is also a blog post -->
  <h1>My first post</h1>
  <p>This is my first post.</p>
  <aside>
   <!-- this aside is about the blog post, since it's inside the
   <article> element; it would be wrong, for instance, to put the
   blogroll here, since the blogroll isn't really related to this post
   specifically, only to the page as a whole -->
   <h1>Posting</h1>
   <p>While I'm thinking about it, I wanted to say something about
   posting. Posting is fun!</p>
  </aside>
  <footer>
   <p><a href="/first-post" rel=bookmark>Permalink</a>
  </footer>
 </article>
 <footer>
  <p><a href="/archives">Archives</a> -
   <a href="/about">About me</a> -
   <a href="/copyright">Copyright</a></p>
 </footer>
</body>

4.3.6 The h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, and h6 elements

Element/Heading_Elements