CAPTION - caption for a table (Not in HTML 2.0!)
Purpose
To present a caption (title) for a table.
Typical rendering
Above or under the table itself, often but not necessarily
using some special, more prominent font.
Usually the caption is horizontally centered. (HTML 3.2
provides
no tool for changing the browser behavior in this respect.)
Basic syntax
<CAPTION>text</CAPTION>
Possible attributes
attribute name | possible values | meaning | notes
|
ALIGN
| TOP, BOTTOM
| placement of the caption relative to the table
| usually the default is TOP
|
The use of this attribute is deprecated
in
HTML 4.0.
Allowed context
TABLE element. If present, the CAPTION element
must appear first, before the TR elements.
Contents
Text elements.
Examples
<CAPTION>Summary of measurement results</CAPTION>
<CAPTION><EM>Mean temperatures</EM></CAPTION>
Notes
You should normally include a caption for each table.
The caption text should be relatively short, yet informative.
Avoid inserting explanations into a caption. Give the explanations
within normal text paragraphs.
A caption should tell what the table is about.
The normal text (outside the table)
should tell why the table is presented, i.e.
how the table relates to the text of the document.
See the discussion of tables, which contains
additional examples, too.
Some browsers (e.g. Netscape) do not render the caption in a visually
distinctive manner. Using phrase markup such as
EM
or
STRONG
within the CAPTION element
may therefore be desirable.
Date of last update:
2010-12-16.