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Emphasizes text, usually by rendering it in italic.

HTML 2, 3.2, 4, 4.01, 5

HTML Syntax

<em
   class = classname
   id = value
   style = css_style_rules
   title = text
>

NOTE: Both start and end tags are required.

The <em> element represents stress emphasis of its contents.

The placement of stress emphasis changes the meaning of a sentence, and thus forms an integral part of the content.

The precise way in which stress is used to get the point across depends on the author.

Most browsers render text within <em> tags in emphasized type by default.

Authors can use CSS, though, to convey additional semantic information as needed, for example, to change color or font-weight. This makes it easier to manage multiple use cases of the <em> element.

The <em> element is similar in function to the <i> italic element.

The <em> element has no attribute of its own, but supports global attributes common to all HTML elements.

The following shows how the em element may be used.

<p>This paragraph has <em>some emphasized text</em>.

which would render on a Web page as

This paragraph has some emphasized text.

• 4.5.2 The em element

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