Learning HTML 3.2 by Examples, section 5 Descriptions of HTML 3.2 tags:

ADDRESS - document author information

Purpose

To provide contact information about the author of the current document ( i.e. the document in which the element is used).

Typical rendering

Typical rendering should involve paragraph breaks before and after. This is, however, not the case in Netscape, for example (see notes below). A browser may or may not use some special font like italics.

Basic syntax

<ADDRESS>address information</ADDRESS>

Possible attributes

None.

Allowed context

Block container.

Text elements and P elements.

In HTML 4.0 Strict, P elements are not allowed within an ADDRESS element.

Examples

Very simple address information, containing just the author's E-mail address:

Example ADDRESS-1.html:

<ADDRESS>
jkorpela@cs.tut.fi
</ADDRESS>

One idea is to provide just the author's name but so that it is a link to a home page containing more information. This is typically suitable for short documents to be viewed on the screen only.

Example ADDRESS-2.html:

<ADDRESS>
<A HREF="../">Jukka Korpela</A>
</ADDRESS>

A longer example which uses several ADDRESS elements, to specify different kinds of addresses (notice that unfortunately Netscape may not distinguish them visually from each other):

Example ADDRESS-3.html:

<ADDRESS>
Jukka Korpela, M.S. (Math.)<BR>
Helsinki University of Technology Computing Centre<BR>
FIN-02150 Espoo<BR>
Finland
</ADDRESS>
<ADDRESS>
Telephone International +358 9 451 4319
</ADDRESS>
<ADDRESS>
Electronic mail (Internet):
<A HREF="mailto:jkorpela@cs.tut.fi">jkorpela@cs.tut.fi</A><BR>
WWW home page:
<A HREF="../">../</A>
</ADDRESS>

Notes

Typically an ADDRESS element is placed either under the main heading of the document or at the end of the document (perhaps preceded by an HR element to separate the address information from the end of the document text).

NCSA Beginner's Guide to HTML says that the ADDRESS element "is not used for postal addresses", but the HTML 2.0 specification contains no such statement; on the contrary, its example of ADDRESS illustrates using it for a postal address. Notice that the ADDRESS element obeys the normal rules for division into lines; thus, if you want the components of a postal address appear on lines of their own, use the BR element for line breaks.

Several browsers, including Netscape, do not use normal paragraph breaks when rendering ADDRESS. You might therefore consider using explicit P tags within an ADDRESS element around the address information, although this does not conform to HTML 4.0 Strict. (Notice that in HTML 3.2, a P element is allowed within ADDRESS but not vice versa.)

It is advisable to obey applicable standards when writing address information. In particular, when providing telephone numbers, please apply CCITT recommendation E.123.

The ADDRESS element itself creates no links; to provide e.g. a link to author's home page or a mailto link to author's E-mail address, use the normal A element with HREF attribute (within the ADDRESS structure or outside it); see also: META element and LINK element with REV attribute.

Don't forget to add BR tags for line breaks.

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Date of last update: 2010-12-16.

This page belongs to the free information site IT and communication, section Web authoring and surfing, by Jukka "Yucca" Korpela.