Sams Teach Yourself HTML, CSS & JavaScript Web Publishing in One Hour a Day

ptg16476052

Character-Level Elements 123

7

<code> This tag indicates that the text inside is a code sample and displays it

in a fixed-width font such as Courier. For example:

<p><code>#include "trans.h"</code></p>

<samp> This tag indicates sample text and is generally presented in a fixed-

width font, like <code>. An example of its usage follows :

<p>The URL for that page is <samp>http://www.cern.ch/

</samp></p>

<kbd> This tag indicates text that’s intended to be typed by a user. It’s also

presented in a fixed-width font. Consider the following :

<p>Type the following command: <kbd>find. -name "prune"

-print</kbd></p>

<var> This tag indicates the name of a variable, or some entity to be replaced

with an actual value. Often it’s displayed as italic or underline and is

used as follows:

<p><code>chown</code> <var>your_name for the_file

</var></p>

<dfn> This tag indicates a definition. <dfn> is used to highlight a word (usu-

ally in italics) that will be defined or has just been defined, as in the

following example:

<p>Styles that are named after how they are actually

used are called

<dfn>logical styles</dfn></p>

<cite> This tag indicates the cited title of a work—usually displayed in italics.

It is written as in the following:

<p>"use the Force, Luke" <cite>"Star Wars"</cite> (1976)</p>

<abbr> This tag indicates the abbreviation of a word, as in the following:

<p>Use the standard two-letter state abbreviation

(such as <abbr>CA</abbr> for California)</p>

Only the <abbr> tag made it into HTML5, <acronym> has been

removed due to redundancy. You may still see it used, but you

should use the <abbr> tag instead.

NOTE

The following code snippets demonstrate each of the semantic HTML tags mentioned,
and Figure 7.1 illustrates how al l the tags are displayed.