W3C Style Guide HTML


TITLE

The title of a document is specified by the TITLE element. The TITLE element should occur in the HEAD of the document.

There may only be one title in any document. It should identify the content of the document in a fairly wide context.

The title is not part of the text of the document, but is a property of the whole document. It may not contain anchors, paragraph marks, or highlighting. The title may be used to identify the node in a history list, to label the window displaying the node, etc. It is not normally displayed in the text of a document itself. Contrast titles with headings . The title should ideally be less than 64 characters in length. That is, many applications will display document titles in window titles, menus, etc where there is only limited room. Whilst there is no limit on the length of a title (as it may be automatically generated from other data), information providers are warned that it may be truncated if long.

Examples of use

Appropriate titles might be

		<TITLE>Rivest and Neuman. 1989(b)</TITLE>

or

		<TITLE>A Recipe for Maple Syrup Flap-Jack</TITLE>

or

		<TITLE>Introduction -- AFS user's Guide</TITLE>

Examples of inappropriate titles are those which are only meaningful within context,

		<TITLE>Introduction</TITLE>

or too long,

	<TITLE>Remarks on the Quantum-Gravity effects of "Bean
	Pole" diversification in Mononucleosis patients in Developing
	Countries under Economic Conditions Prevalent during
	the Second half of the Twentieth Century, and Related Papers:
	a Summary</TITLE>


(Part of style guide for online hypertext. Back to Linking into context , Up to Writing each document , on to browser independence )
Tim BL