HTML <samp> Tag

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The <samp> tag contains sample output from a computer program or a script. In the browser, the content of the tag is displayed in a monospace font, by default.

The <samp> tag is a phrase tag indicating that a text section has structural meaning.

You can achieve a better effect with CSS, though the <samp> tag is not deprecated.

The default font face of the browser can be overridden with a CSS rule for the <samp> tag. However, the browser’s preferences may take priority over any specified CSS.

You can use the <output> tag instead of <samp> if you want an element to serve as a container for the output created by the website or JavaScript code.

Syntax

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

Example of the HTML <samp> tag:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>
    <title>Title of the document</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <p>You see an ordinary text here. <samp>But this is a sample text.</samp> And another ordinary text.</p>
  </body>
</html>

Try it Yourself »

Result

In HTML, there are other elements used to specify the parts of a technical document: the <code> tag is used for defining the computer program output, the <kbd> tag is used for specifying a keyboard input, and the <var> tag is used for specifying variables.

Attributes

The <samp> tag supports the Global attributes and the Event Attributes.

How to style <samp> tag?

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

CSS text-shadow property adds shadow to text.
CSS text-align-last property sets the alignment of the last line of the text.
CSS line-height property specifies the height of a line.
CSS letter-spacing property defines the spaces between letters/characters in a text.
CSS word-spacing property sets the spacing between words.