3.2.3 Global attributes

The following attributes are common to and may be specified on all HTML elements (even those not defined in this specification):

These attributes are only defined by this specification as attributes for HTML elements. When this specification refers to elements having these attributes, elements from namespaces that are not defined as having these attributes must not be considered as being elements with these attributes.

For example, in the following XML fragment, the "bogus" element does not have a dir attribute as defined in this specification, despite having an attribute with the literal name "dir". Thus, the directionality of the inner-most span element is 'rtl', inherited from the div element indirectly through the "bogus" element.

<div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/html" dir="rtl">
 <bogus xmlns="http://example.net/ns" dir="ltr">
  <span xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/html">
  </span>
 </bogus>
</div>

The following event handler content attributes may be specified on any HTML element:

The attributes marked with an asterisk have a different meaning when specified on body elements as those elements expose event handlers of the Window object with the same names.

While these attributes apply to all elements, they are not useful on all elements. For example, only media elements will ever receive a volumechange event fired by the user agent.


Custom data attributes (e.g. data-foldername or data-msgid) can be specified on any HTML element, to store custom data specific to the page.


In HTML documents, elements in the HTML namespace may have an xmlns attribute specified, if, and only if, it has the exact value "http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml". This does not apply to XML documents.

In HTML, the xmlns attribute has absolutely no effect. It is basically a talisman. It is allowed merely to make migration to and from XHTML mildly easier. When parsed by an HTML parser, the attribute ends up in no namespace, not the "http://www.w3.org/2000/xmlns/" namespace like namespace declaration attributes in XML do.

In XML, an xmlns attribute is part of the namespace declaration mechanism, and an element cannot actually have an xmlns attribute in no namespace specified.


The XML specification also allows the use of the xml:space attribute in the XML namespace on any element in an XML document. This attribute has no effect on HTML elements, as the default behavior in HTML is to preserve whitespace. [XML]

There is no way to serialize the xml:space attribute on HTML elements in the text/html syntax.


To enable assistive technology products to expose a more fine-grained interface than is otherwise possible with HTML elements and attributes, a set of annotations for assistive technology products can be specified (the ARIA role and aria-* attributes).

3.2.3.1 The id attribute

The id attribute specifies its element's unique identifier (ID). [DOMCORE]

The value must be unique amongst all the IDs in the element's home subtree and must contain at least one character. The value must not contain any space characters.

An element's unique identifier can be used for a variety of purposes, most notably as a way to link to specific parts of a document using fragment identifiers, as a way to target an element when scripting, and as a way to style a specific element from CSS.

Identifiers are opaque strings. Particular meanings should not be derived from the value of the id attribute.

3.2.3.2 The title attribute

The title attribute represents advisory information for the element, such as would be appropriate for a tooltip. On a link, this could be the title or a description of the target resource; on an image, it could be the image credit or a description of the image; on a paragraph, it could be a footnote or commentary on the text; on a citation, it could be further information about the source; and so forth. The value is text.

If this attribute is omitted from an element, then it implies that the title attribute of the nearest ancestor HTML element with a title attribute set is also relevant to this element. Setting the attribute overrides this, explicitly stating that the advisory information of any ancestors is not relevant to this element. Setting the attribute to the empty string indicates that the element has no advisory information.

If the title attribute's value contains "LF" (U+000A) characters, the content is split into multiple lines. Each "LF" (U+000A) character represents a line break.

Caution is advised with respect to the use of newlines in title attributes.

For instance, the following snippet actually defines an abbreviation's expansion with a line break in it:

<p>My logs show that there was some interest in <abbr title="Hypertext
Transport Protocol">HTTP</abbr> today.</p>

Some elements, such as link, abbr, and input, define additional semantics for the title attribute beyond the semantics described above.


The title IDL attribute must reflect the title content attribute.

3.2.3.3 The lang and xml:lang attributes

The lang attribute (in no namespace) specifies the primary language for the element's contents and for any of the element's attributes that contain text. Its value must be a valid BCP 47 language tag, or the empty string. Setting the attribute to the empty string indicates that the primary language is unknown. [BCP47]

The lang attribute in the XML namespace is defined in XML. [XML]

If these attributes are omitted from an element, then the language of this element is the same as the language of its parent element, if any.

The lang attribute in no namespace may be used on any HTML element.

The lang attribute in the XML namespace may be used on HTML elements in XML documents, as well as elements in other namespaces if the relevant specifications allow it (in particular, MathML and SVG allow lang attributes in the XML namespace to be specified on their elements). If both the lang attribute in no namespace and the lang attribute in the XML namespace are specified on the same element, they must have exactly the same value when compared in an ASCII case-insensitive manner.

Authors must not use the lang attribute in the XML namespace on HTML elements in HTML documents. To ease migration to and from XHTML, authors may specify an attribute in no namespace with no prefix and with the literal localname "xml:lang" on HTML elements in HTML documents, but such attributes must only be specified if a lang attribute in no namespace is also specified, and both attributes must have the same value when compared in an ASCII case-insensitive manner.

The attribute in no namespace with no prefix and with the literal localname "xml:lang" has no effect on language processing.


To determine the language of a node, user agents must look at the nearest ancestor element (including the element itself if the node is an element) that has a lang attribute in the XML namespace set or is an HTML element and has a lang in no namespace attribute set. That attribute specifies the language of the node (regardless of its value).

If both the lang attribute in no namespace and the lang attribute in the XML namespace are set on an element, user agents must use the lang attribute in the XML namespace, and the lang attribute in no namespace must be ignored for the purposes of determining the element's language.

If none of the node's ancestors, including the root element, have either attribute set, but there is a pragma-set default language set, then that is the language of the node. If there is no pragma-set default language set, then language information from a higher-level protocol (such as HTTP), if any, must be used as the final fallback language instead. In the absence of any such language information, and in cases where the higher-level protocol reports multiple languages, the language of the node is unknown, and the corresponding language tag is the empty string.

If the resulting value is not a recognized language tag, then it must be treated as an unknown language having the given language tag, distinct from all other languages. For the purposes of round-tripping or communicating with other services that expect language tags, user agents should pass unknown language tags through unmodified.

Thus, for instance, an element with lang="xyzzy" would be matched by the selector :lang(xyzzy) (e.g. in CSS), but it would not be matched by :lang(abcde), even though both are equally invalid. Similarly, if a Web browser and screen reader working in unison communicated about the language of the element, the browser would tell the screen reader that the language was "xyzzy", even if it knew it was invalid, just in case the screen reader actually supported a language with that tag after all.

If the resulting value is the empty string, then it must be interpreted as meaning that the language of the node is explicitly unknown.


User agents may use the element's language to determine proper processing or rendering (e.g. in the selection of appropriate fonts or pronunciations, for dictionary selection, or for the user interfaces of form controls such as date pickers).


The lang IDL attribute must reflect the lang content attribute in no namespace.

3.2.3.4 The translate attribute

The translate attribute is an enumerated attribute that is used to specify whether an element's attribute values and the values of its Text node children are to be translated when the page is localized, or whether to leave them unchanged.

The attribute's keywords are the empty string, yes, and no. The empty string and the yes keyword map to the yes state. The no keyword maps to the no state. In addition, there is a third state, the inherit state, which is the missing value default (and the invalid value default).

Each element has a translation mode, which is in either the translate-enabled state or the no-translate state. If the element's translate attribute is in the yes state, then the element's translation mode is in the translate-enabled state. Otherwise, if the element's translate attribute is in the no state, then the element's translation mode is in the no-translate state. Otherwise, the element's translate attribute is in the inherit state; in that case, the element's translation mode is in the same state as its parent element, if any, or in the translate-enabled state, if the element is a root element.

When an element is in the translate-enabled state, the element's attribute values and the values of its Text node children are to be translated when the page is localized.

When an element is in the no-translate state, the element's attribute values and the values of its Text node children are to be left as-is when the page is localized, e.g. because the element contains a person's name or a the name of a computer program.


The translate IDL attribute must, on getting, return true if the element's translation mode is translate-enabled, and false otherwise. On setting, it must set the content attribute's value to "yes" if the new value is true, and set the content attribute's value to "no otherwise.

In this example, everything in the document is to be translated when the page is localised, except the sample keyboard input and sample program output:

<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<html> <!-- default on the root element is translate=yes -->
 <head>
  <title>The Bee Game</title> <!-- implied translate=yes inherited from ancestors -->
 </head>
 <body>
  <p>The Bee Game is a text adventure game in English.</p>
  <p>When the game launches, the first thing you should do is type
  <kbd translate=no>eat honey</kbd>. The game will respond with:</p>
  <pre><samp translate=no>Yum yum! That was some good honey!</samp></pre>
 </body>
</html>
3.2.3.5 The xml:base attribute (XML only)

The xml:base attribute is defined in XML Base. [XMLBASE]

The xml:base attribute may be used on elements of XML documents. Authors must not use the xml:base attribute in HTML documents.

3.2.3.6 The dir attribute

The dir attribute specifies the element's text directionality. The attribute is an enumerated attribute with the following keywords and states:

The ltr keyword, which maps to the ltr state

Indicates that the contents of the element are explicitly directionally embedded left-to-right text.

The rtl keyword, which maps to the rtl state

Indicates that the contents of the element are explicitly directionally embedded right-to-left text.

The auto keyword, which maps to the auto state

Indicates that the contents of the element are explicitly embedded text, but that the direction is to be determined programmatically using the contents of the element (as described below).

The heuristic used by this state is very crude (it just looks at the first character with a strong directionality, in a manner analogous to the Paragraph Level determination in the bidirectional algorithm). Authors are urged to only use this value as a last resort when the direction of the text is truly unknown and no better server-side heuristic can be applied.

For textarea and pre elements, the heuristic is applied on a per-paragraph level.

The attribute has no invalid value default and no missing value default.

The directionality of an element is either 'ltr' or 'rtl', and is determined as per the first appropriate set of steps from the following list:

If the element's dir attribute is in the ltr state

The directionality of the element is 'ltr'.

If the element's dir attribute is in the rtl state

The directionality of the element is 'rtl'.

If the element is an input element whose type attribute is in the Text, Search, Telephone, URL, or E-mail state, and the dir attribute is in the auto state
If the element is a textarea element and the dir attribute is in the auto state

If the element's value contains a character of bidirectional character type AL or R, and there is no character of bidirectional character type L anywhere before it in the element's value, then the directionality of the element is 'rtl'. Otherwise, the directionality of the element is 'ltr'.

If the element's dir attribute is in the auto state
If the element is a bdi element and the dir attribute is not in a defined state (i.e. it is not present or has an invalid value)

Find the first character in tree order that matches the following criteria:

If such a character is found and it is of bidirectional character type AL or R, the directionality of the element is 'rtl'.

Otherwise, the directionality of the element is 'ltr'.

If the element is a root element and the dir attribute is not in a defined state (i.e. it is not present or has an invalid value)

The directionality of the element is 'ltr'.

If the element has a parent element and the dir attribute is not in a defined state (i.e. it is not present or has an invalid value)

The directionality of the element is the same as the element's parent element's directionality.

The effect of this attribute is primarily on the presentation layer. For example, the rendering section in this specification defines a mapping from this attribute to the CSS 'direction' and 'unicode-bidi' properties, and CSS defines rendering in terms of those properties.


document . dir [ = value ]

Returns the html element's dir attribute's value, if any.

Can be set, to either "ltr", "rtl", or "auto" to replace the html element's dir attribute's value.

If there is no html element, returns the empty string and ignores new values.

The dir IDL attribute on an element must reflect the dir content attribute of that element, limited to only known values.

The dir IDL attribute on Document objects must reflect the dir content attribute of the html element, if any, limited to only known values. If there is no such element, then the attribute must return the empty string and do nothing on setting.

Authors are strongly encouraged to use the dir attribute to indicate text direction rather than using CSS, since that way their documents will continue to render correctly even in the absence of CSS (e.g. as interpreted by search engines).

This markup fragment is of an IM conversation.

<p dir=auto class="u1"><b><bdi>Student</bdi>:</b> How do you write "What's your name?" in Arabic?</p>
<p dir=auto class="u2"><b><bdi>Teacher</bdi>:</b> ما اسمك؟</p>
<p dir=auto class="u1"><b><bdi>Student</bdi>:</b> Thanks.</p>
<p dir=auto class="u2"><b><bdi>Teacher</bdi>:</b> That's written "شكرًا".</p>
<p dir=auto class="u2"><b><bdi>Teacher</bdi>:</b> Do you know how to write "Please"?</p>
<p dir=auto class="u1"><b><bdi>Student</bdi>:</b> "من فضلك", right?</p>

Given a suitable style sheet and the default alignment styles for the p element, namely to align the text to the start edge of the paragraph, the resulting rendering could be as follows:

Each paragraph rendered as a separate block, with the paragraphs left-aligned except the second paragraph and the last one, which would  be right aligned, with the usernames ('Student' and 'Teacher' in this example) flush right, with a colon to their left, and the text first to the left of that.

As noted earlier, the auto value is not a panacea. The final paragraph in this example is misinterpreted as being right-to-left text, since it begins with an Arabic character, which causes the "right?" to be to the left of the Arabic text.

3.2.3.7 The class attribute

Every HTML element may have a class attribute specified.

The attribute, if specified, must have a value that is a set of space-separated tokens representing the various classes that the element belongs to.

The classes that an HTML element has assigned to it consists of all the classes returned when the value of the class attribute is split on spaces. (Duplicates are ignored.)

Assigning classes to an element affects class matching in selectors in CSS, the getElementsByClassName() method in the DOM, and other such features.

There are no additional restrictions on the tokens authors can use in the class attribute, but authors are encouraged to use values that describe the nature of the content, rather than values that describe the desired presentation of the content.


The className and classList IDL attributes must both reflect the class content attribute.

3.2.3.8 The style attribute

All HTML elements may have the style content attribute set. This is a CSS styling attribute as defined by the CSS Styling Attribute Syntax specification. [CSSATTR]

In user agents that support CSS, the attribute's value must be parsed when the attribute is added or has its value changed, according to the rules given for CSS styling attributes. [CSSATTR]

Documents that use style attributes on any of their elements must still be comprehensible and usable if those attributes were removed.

In particular, using the style attribute to hide and show content, or to convey meaning that is otherwise not included in the document, is non-conforming. (To hide and show content, use the hidden attribute.)


element . style

Returns a CSSStyleDeclaration object for the element's style attribute.

The style IDL attribute must return a CSSStyleDeclaration whose value represents the declarations specified in the attribute, if present. Mutating the CSSStyleDeclaration object must create a style attribute on the element (if there isn't one already) and then change its value to be a value representing the serialized form of the CSSStyleDeclaration object. The same object must be returned each time. [CSSOM]

In the following example, the words that refer to colors are marked up using the span element and the style attribute to make those words show up in the relevant colors in visual media.

<p>My sweat suit is <span style="color: green; background:
transparent">green</span> and my eyes are <span style="color: blue;
background: transparent">blue</span>.</p>
3.2.3.9 Embedding custom non-visible data with the data-* attributes

A custom data attribute is an attribute in no namespace whose name starts with the string "data-", has at least one character after the hyphen, is XML-compatible, and contains no characters in the range U+0041 to U+005A (LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A to LATIN CAPITAL LETTER Z).

All attributes on HTML elements in HTML documents get ASCII-lowercased automatically, so the restriction on ASCII uppercase letters doesn't affect such documents.

Custom data attributes are intended to store custom data private to the page or application, for which there are no more appropriate attributes or elements.

These attributes are not intended for use by software that is independent of the site that uses the attributes.

For instance, a site about music could annotate list items representing tracks in an album with custom data attributes containing the length of each track. This information could then be used by the site itself to allow the user to sort the list by track length, or to filter the list for tracks of certain lengths.

<ol>
 <li data-length="2m11s">Beyond The Sea</li>
 ...
</ol>

It would be inappropriate, however, for the user to use generic software not associated with that music site to search for tracks of a certain length by looking at this data.

This is because these attributes are intended for use by the site's own scripts, and are not a generic extension mechanism for publicly-usable metadata.

Every HTML element may have any number of custom data attributes specified, with any value.


element . dataset

Returns a DOMStringMap object for the element's data-* attributes.

Hyphenated names become camel-cased. For example, data-foo-bar="" becomes element.dataset.fooBar.

The dataset IDL attribute provides convenient accessors for all the data-* attributes on an element. On getting, the dataset IDL attribute must return a DOMStringMap object, associated with the following algorithms, which expose these attributes on their element:

The algorithm for getting the list of name-value pairs
  1. Let list be an empty list of name-value pairs.
  2. For each content attribute on the element whose first five characters are the string "data-" and whose remaining characters (if any) do not include any characters in the range U+0041 to U+005A (LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A to LATIN CAPITAL LETTER Z), add a name-value pair to list whose name is the attribute's name with the first five characters removed and whose value is the attribute's value.
  3. For each name on the list, for each "-" (U+002D) character in the name that is followed by a character in the range U+0061 to U+007A (lowercase ASCII letters), remove the U+002D HYPHEN-MINUS character (-) and replace the character that followed it by the same character converted to ASCII uppercase.
  4. Return list.
The algorithm for setting names to certain values
  1. Let name be the name passed to the algorithm.
  2. Let value be the value passed to the algorithm.
  3. If name contains a "-" (U+002D) character followed by a character in the range U+0061 to U+007A (lowercase ASCII letters), throw a SyntaxError exception and abort these steps.
  4. For each character in the range U+0041 to U+005A (uppercase ASCII letters) in name, insert a "-" (U+002D) character before the character and replace the character with the same character converted to ASCII lowercase.
  5. Insert the string data- at the front of name.
  6. Set the value of the attribute with the name name, to the value value, replacing any previous value if the attribute already existed. If setAttribute() would have thrown an exception when setting an attribute with the name name, then this must throw the same exception.
The algorithm for deleting names
  1. Let name be the name passed to the algorithm.
  2. For each character in the range U+0041 to U+005A (uppercase ASCII letters) in name, insert a "-" (U+002D) character before the character and replace the character with the same character converted to ASCII lowercase.
  3. Insert the string data- at the front of name.
  4. Remove the attribute with the name name, if such an attribute exists. Do nothing otherwise.

The same object must be returned each time.

If a Web page wanted an element to represent a space ship, e.g. as part of a game, it would have to use the class attribute along with data-* attributes:

<div class="spaceship" data-ship-id="92432"
     data-weapons="laser 2" data-shields="50%"
     data-x="30" data-y="10" data-z="90">
 <button class="fire"
         onclick="spaceships[this.parentNode.dataset.shipId].fire()">
  Fire
 </button>
</div>

Notice how the hyphenated attribute name becomes camel-cased in the API.

Authors should carefully design such extensions so that when the attributes are ignored and any associated CSS dropped, the page is still usable.

User agents must not derive any implementation behavior from these attributes or values. Specifications intended for user agents must not define these attributes to have any meaningful values.

JavaScript libraries may use the custom data attributes, as they are considered to be part of the page on which they are used. Authors of libraries that are reused by many authors are encouraged to include their name in the attribute names, to reduce the risk of clashes. Where it makes sense, library authors are also encouraged to make the exact name used in the attribute names customizable, so that libraries whose authors unknowingly picked the same name can be used on the same page, and so that multiple versions of a particular library can be used on the same page even when those versions are not mutually compatible.

For example, a library called "DoQuery" could use attribute names like data-doquery-range, and a library called "jJo" could use attributes names like data-jjo-range. The jJo library could also provide an API to set which prefix to use (e.g. J.setDataPrefix('j2'), making the attributes have names like data-j2-range).