The HTML <em>
element marks text that has stress emphasis. The <em>
element can be nested, with each level of nesting indicating a greater degree of emphasis.
The source for this interactive example is stored in a GitHub repository. If you'd like to contribute to the interactive examples project, please clone https://github.com/mdn/interactive-examples and send us a pull request.
Content categories | Flow content, phrasing content, palpable content. |
Permitted content | Phrasing content. |
Tag omission | None, both the starting and ending tag are mandatory. |
Permitted parents | Any element that accepts phrasing content. |
Implicit ARIA role | No corresponding role |
Permitted ARIA roles | Any |
DOM interface | HTMLElement Up to Gecko 1.9.2 (Firefox 4) inclusive, Firefox implements the HTMLSpanElement interface for this element.
|
Attributes
This element only includes the global attributes.
Usage notes
The <em>
element is for words that have a stressed emphasis compared to surrounding text, which is often limited to a word or words of a sentence and affects the meaning of the sentence itself.
Typically this element is displayed in italic type. However, it should not be used simply to apply italic styling; use the CSS font-style
property for that purpose. Use the <cite>
element to mark the title of a work (book, play, song, etc.). Use the <i>
element to mark text that is in an alternate tone or mood, which covers many common situations for italics such as scientific names or words in other languages. Use the <strong>
element to mark text that has greater importance than surrounding text.
<i> vs. <em>
New developers are often confused at seeing multiple elements that produce similar results. <em>
and <i>
are a common example, since they both italicize text. What's the difference? Which should you use?
By default, the visual result is the same. However, the semantic meaning is different. The <em>
element represents stress emphasis of its contents, while the <i>
element represents text that is set off from the normal prose, such a foreign word, fictional character thoughts, or when the text refers to the definition of a word instead of representing its semantic meaning. (The title of a work, such as the name of a book or movie, should use <cite>
.)
This means the right one to use depends on the situation. Neither is for purely decorational purposes, that's what CSS styling is for.
An example for <em>
could be: "Just do it already!", or: "We had to do something about it". A person or software reading the text would pronounce the words in italics with an emphasis, using verbal stress.
An example for <i>
could be: "The Queen Mary sailed last night". Here, there is no added emphasis or importance on the word "Queen Mary". It is merely indicated that the object in question is not a queen named Mary, but a ship named Queen Mary. Another example for <i>
could be: "The word the is an article".
Example
The <em>
element is often used to indicate an implicit or explicit contrast.
<p>
In HTML 5, what was previously called
<em>block-level</em> content is now called
<em>flow</em> content.
</p>
Result
Specifications
Specification | Status | Comment |
---|---|---|
HTML Living StandardThe definition of '<em>' in that specification. | Living Standard | |
HTML5The definition of '<em>' in that specification. | Recommendation | |
HTML 4.01 SpecificationThe definition of '<em>' in that specification. | Recommendation |
Browser compatibility
The compatibility table in this page is generated from structured data. If you'd like to contribute to the data, please check out https://github.com/mdn/browser-compat-data and send us a pull request.
Update compatibility data on GitHub
Desktop | Mobile | |||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
em
|
Chrome
Full support 1 |
Edge
Full support 12 |
Firefox
Full support 1 |
IE
Full support Yes |
Opera
Full support Yes |
Safari
Full support Yes |
WebView Android
Full support Yes |
Chrome Android
Full support Yes |
Firefox Android
Full support 4 |
Opera Android
Full support Yes |
Safari iOS
Full support Yes |
Samsung Internet Android
Full support Yes |
Legend
- Full support
- Full support
See also
<em>: The Emphasis element by Mozilla Contributors is licensed under CC-BY-SA 2.5.