<cite>

The <cite> element represents the title of a work.

Point

• Example of work:
  • book
  • paper
  • essay
  • poem
  • score
  • song
  • script
  • film [Example A]
  • TV show
  • game
  • sculpture
  • theatre production
  • opera
  • musical ...

• A person's name is not the title of a work. This element must therefore not be used to mark up people's names. [Example of bad usage]

HTML Attributes

See global attributes.

Examples

Example A

[try it]

<p>My favorite movie is <cite>star wars</cite>.</p>

Example of bad usage

The following, however, is incorrect usage, as the cite element here is containing far more than the title of the work:

<!-- do not copy this example, it is an example of bad usage! -->
<p>According to <cite>the Wikipedia article on HTML</cite>, as it
stood in mid-February 2008, leaving attribute values unquoted is
unsafe. This is obviously an over-simplification.</p>

This is also incorrect usage, because a person is not a work:

<!-- do not copy this example, it is an example of bad usage! -->
<p><q>This is still wrong!</q>, said <cite>Hiroki</cite>.</p>

HTML Reference

The HTML5 specification defines the <cite> element in 4.6.6 The cite element.