HTML <abbr> Tag

The browser renders the characters inside the <abbr> tag as an abbreviation or an acronym. To decipher the abbreviation, the global title attribute is used (displayed as a pop-up text prompt when you hover the mouse over the abbreviation).

The content of the <abbr> tag in some browsers can be marked with a dotted underscore.

Syntax

The <abbr> tag comes in pairs. The content is written between the opening (<abbr>) and closing (</abbr>) tags.

Example of the HTML <abbr> tag:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>
    <title>Title of the document</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <p><abbr title="Universal Resource Locator">URL</abbr> - This is a special form of designating an individual resource address on the Internet </p>
  </body>
</html>

Result

URL - This is a special form of designating an individual resource address on the Internet.


(hover your mouse over the abbreviation).

Attributes

The <abbr> tag supports the Global Attributes and the Event Attributes.

How to style <abbr> tag?

Common properties to alter the visual weight/emphasis/size of text in <abbr> tag:

  • CSS font-style property sets the style of the font. normal | italic | oblique | initial | inherit.
  • CSS font-family property specifies a prioritized list of one or more font family names and/or generic family names for the selected element.
  • CSS font-size property sets the size of the font.
  • CSS font-weight property defines whether the font should be bold or thick.
  • CSS text-transform property controls text case and capitalization.
  • CSS text-decoration property specifies the decoration added to text, and is a shorthand property for text-decoration-line, text-decoration-color, text-decoration-style.

Coloring text in <abbr> tag:

  • CSS color property describes the color of the text content and text decorations.
  • CSS background-color property sets the background color of an element.

Text layout styles for <abbr> tag:

  • CSS text-indent property specifies the indentation of the first line in a text block.
  • CSS text-overflow property specifies how overflowed content that is not displayed should be signalled to the user.
  • CSS white-space property specifies how white-space inside an element is handled.
  • CSS word-break property specifies where the lines should be broken.

Other properties worth looking at for <abbr> tag:

Browser support

chrome edge firefox safari opera

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