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HTML <cite> Tag

The <cite> tag is used to define the titles of work, books, images, etc. The tag attributes and examples.

The <cite> tag defines the title of creative works, books, paintings, television programs, websites, etc.

Tip

Use the <blockquote> element to define long quotes, and the <q> element to define short ones.

According to the W3C HTML specification, a reference to a creative work can contain the name of the work’s author. The WHATWG HTML Living Standard, however, states that the author's name should not be included.

Use the cite attribute on the <q> or <blockquote> element to reference the source of the quoted material.

In general, the text inside the <cite> is displayed in italics, by default. If you want to avoid this, you can apply the CSS font-style property to <cite>.

Syntax

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

Example of the HTML <cite> tag:

HTML <cite> Tag

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>
    <title>Title of the document</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <p>Michelangelo sculpted <cite>David</cite> between 1501 and 1504</p>
  </body>
</html>
Try it Yourself »

Result

cite example

Attributes

The <cite> tag also supports the Global Attributes and the Event Attributes.

How to style an HTML <cite> Tag

By default, browsers render <cite> text in italics. You can change this using the CSS font-style property:

cite {
  font-style: normal;
}

Note that the <cite> element does not support the href attribute directly. To link to the source, wrap the <cite> inside an <a> tag:

<p>According to <cite><a href="https://example.com/source">The Art of Sculpting</a></cite>, Michelangelo...</p>

Practice

Practice

What does the HTML <cite> tag do in HTML?