HTML <abbr> Tag

❮ Prev Next ❯

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>

Try it Yourself »

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:

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.