HTML address tag - Learn HTML

The <address> tag provides contact information for the author or owner of a document or article. It can hold an email address, a phone number, a physical address, a link to the author's site, social-media handles, and so on.

This page explains what <address> actually means semantically, where to place it, the common misuse to avoid, and how to combine it with <footer>.

What `<address>` really means

The most important thing to understand is that <address> is not a generic container for any postal address. It specifically marks up the contact details for:

the nearest ancestor <article> — i.e. the author of that article, or
the document as a whole, when its nearest ancestor is the <body> element — i.e. the owner of the page.

So the scope of an <address> block depends on where you put it:

Inside <body> (commonly within the page <footer>) → it refers to the whole document's author or owner.
Inside an <article> → it refers to that article's author.

Danger

Do not use <address> for an arbitrary postal address that is just part of the page content — for example a mailing address inside a blog post, a venue location on an events page, or a store's address in a product description. Those are not contact details for the document's or article's author, so they should be plain text (or wrapped in a <p>). Misusing <address> makes the markup say something untrue to assistive technology and search engines.

Syntax

The <address> tag comes in pairs. The content goes between the opening (<address>) and closing (</address>) tags.

Most browsers add a line break before and after the element and render the text in italics. You can override that styling with CSS.

Note that <address> must not contain headings (<h1>–<h6>), sectioning elements such as <article> or <section>, or other <address>, <header>, or <footer> elements.

Document-level contact info

When the contact information applies to the whole page, place <address> inside the <body> — typically within the page footer:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>
    <title>Title of the document</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <address>
      Author: W3docs team<br />
      <a href="mailto:[email protected]">Contact Author</a>
    </address>
  </body>
</html>

Try it Yourself »

Author of an article

To mark up the contact details of a single article's author, put <address> inside that article's <article> element (usually within the article's <footer>). This is the canonical, semantically correct use of the tag:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>
    <title>Article author</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <article>
      <h2>Understanding Semantic HTML</h2>
      <p>Semantic elements describe their meaning to both the browser and the developer...</p>
      <footer>
        <p>Posted on June 17, 2026.</p>
        <address>
          Written by Jane Doe.<br />
          Contact: <a href="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</a><br />
          <a href="https://example.com/jane">example.com/jane</a>
        </address>
      </footer>
    </article>
  </body>
</html>

Using `<address>` in the page footer

When the author/owner details belong to the whole site, you can include <address> together with other information inside the page <footer>. Here the address is contact info for the site owner — which is exactly what <address> is for. A plain company mailing address with no author or owner context would not belong in <address>:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>
    <style>
      .header{
        height: 40px;
        padding: 20px 20px 0;
        background: #e1e1e1;
      }
      .main-content{
        height: 60vh;
        padding: 20px;
      }
      footer{
        padding: 10px 20px;
        background: #666666;
        color: white;
      }
      a{
        color: #00aaff;
      }
    </style>
  </head>
  <body>
    <div class="header">Header / Menu</div>
    <div class="main-content">
      <h1>Main content</h1>
      <p>This is some paragraph. </p>
    </div>
    <footer style="display:flex; justify-content:space-between; align-items:flex-end;">
      <p style="margin:0;">Company © W3docs. All rights reserved.</p>
      <address>
        Contact us: <a href="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</a>
      </address>
    </footer>
  </body>
</html>

Attributes

The <address> tag has no element-specific attributes. It supports only the Global Attributes and the Event Attributes.

Practice

What is the purpose of the HTML <address> tag?

It provides contact information for the author or owner of a document or its nearest article.It adds a header to the webpage.It is a generic container for any postal address appearing in the page content.It changes the color of the background of a webpage.It is used to include the main content of the web page.

What <address> really means