Revision 842841 of <abbr>

<p>The <em>HTML Abbreviation element</em> (<strong>&lt;abbr&gt;</strong>) represents an abbreviation and optionally provides a full description for it. If present, the <code>title</code> attribute must contain this full description and nothing else.</p>

<pre class="brush: html">
&lt;p&gt;I do &lt;abbr title="Hypertext Markup Language"&gt;HTML&lt;/abbr&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</pre>

<p style="margin-top:-1.5em;"><small>See more in depth examples in the <em><a href="https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Learn/HTML/Howto/Mark_abbreviations_and_make_them_understandable">How to mark abbreviations and make them understandable</a></em> article.</small></p>

<table class="htmlelt">
 <tbody>
  <tr>
   <th scope="row">DOM Interface</th>
   <td>{{domxref("HTMLElement")}}</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <th scope="row"><a href="/en-US/docs/HTML/Content_categories">Content categories</a></th>
   <td><a href="/en-US/docs/HTML/Content_categories#Flow_content" title="HTML/Content categories#Flow content">Flow content</a>, <a href="/en-US/docs/HTML/Content_categories#Phrasing_content" title="HTML/Content categories#Phrasing content">phrasing content</a>, palpable content</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <th scope="row">Permitted content</th>
   <td><a href="/en-US/docs/HTML/Content_categories#Phrasing_content" title="HTML/Content_categories#Phrasing_content">Phrasing content</a></td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <th scope="row">Permitted parent elements</th>
   <td>Any element that accepts <a href="/en-US/docs/HTML/Content_categories#Phrasing_content" title="HTML/Content_categories#Phrasing_content">phrasing content</a></td>
  </tr>
 </tbody>
</table>

<h2 id="Attributes">Attributes</h2>

<p><span style="line-height:21px">This element only includes the&nbsp;</span><a href="https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/HTML/Global_attributes" style="line-height: 21px;" title="HTML/Global attributes">global attributes</a><span style="line-height:21px">.</span></p>

<p>Use the {{htmlattrxref("title")}}&nbsp;attribute to define the&nbsp;full description of the abbreviation. Many user agents present this as a tooltip.</p>

<div class="note">
<p><strong>Note: </strong>In languages with grammatical number (especially languages with more than two&nbsp;numbers, like Arabic), use the same grammatical number in your&nbsp;<code>title</code>&nbsp;attribute as inside your&nbsp;<code>&lt;abbr&gt;</code> element.</p>
</div>

<h2 id="Specifications" name="Specifications">Specifications</h2>

<table class="standard-table">
 <thead>
  <tr>
   <th scope="col">Specification</th>
   <th scope="col">Status</th>
   <th scope="col">Comment</th>
  </tr>
 </thead>
 <tbody>
  <tr>
   <td>{{SpecName('HTML WHATWG', 'text-level-semantics.html#the-abbr-element', '&lt;abbr&gt;')}}</td>
   <td>{{Spec2('HTML WHATWG')}}</td>
   <td>&nbsp;</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <td>{{SpecName('HTML5 W3C', 'text-level-semantics.html#the-abbr-element', '&lt;abbr&gt;')}}</td>
   <td>{{Spec2('HTML5 W3C')}}</td>
   <td>&nbsp;</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <td>{{SpecName('HTML4.01', 'struct/text.html#edef-ABBR', '&lt;abbr&gt;')}}</td>
   <td>{{Spec2('HTML4.01')}}</td>
   <td>&nbsp;</td>
  </tr>
 </tbody>
</table>

<h2 id="Browser_compatibility">Browser compatibility</h2>

<p>{{CompatibilityTable}}</p>

<div id="compat-desktop">
<table class="compat-table">
 <tbody>
  <tr>
   <th>Feature</th>
   <th>Chrome</th>
   <th>Firefox (Gecko)</th>
   <th>Internet Explorer</th>
   <th>Opera</th>
   <th>Safari</th>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <td>Basic support</td>
   <td>2.0</td>
   <td>{{CompatGeckoDesktop(1.0)}} [1]</td>
   <td>7.0</td>
   <td>1.3</td>
   <td>{{CompatVersionUnknown}}</td>
  </tr>
 </tbody>
</table>
</div>

<div id="compat-mobile">
<table class="compat-table">
 <tbody>
  <tr>
   <th>Feature</th>
   <th>Android</th>
   <th>Firefox Mobile (Gecko)</th>
   <th>IE Mobile</th>
   <th>Opera Mobile</th>
   <th>Safari Mobile</th>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <td>Basic support</td>
   <td>{{CompatVersionUnknown}}</td>
   <td>{{CompatVersionUnknown}}</td>
   <td>{{CompatVersionUnknown}}</td>
   <td>{{CompatVersionUnknown}}</td>
   <td>{{CompatVersionUnknown}}</td>
  </tr>
 </tbody>
</table>
</div>

<p>[1]&nbsp;Up to Gecko 1.9.2 (Firefox 3.6), Firefox implemented the {{domxref("HTMLSpanElement")}} interface for this element instead of the {{domxref("HTMLElement")}} interface.</p>

<h2 id="Default_styling">Default styling</h2>

<p>The purpose of this element is purely for the convenience of the author and all browsers display it inline ({{cssxref('display')}}<code>: inline</code>) by default, though its default styling varies from one browser to another:</p>

<ul>
 <li>Some browsers, like Internet Explorer, do not style it differently than a {{HTMLElement("span")}} element.</li>
 <li>Opera, Firefox, and some others add a dotted underline to the content of the element.</li>
 <li>A few browsers not only add a dotted underline, but also put it in small caps; to avoid this styling, adding something like {{cssxref('font-variant')}}<code>: none</code> in the CSS takes care of this case.</li>
</ul>

<h2 id="See_also">See also</h2>

<ul>
 <li><a href="/en-US/Learn/HTML/Element/abbr">Using the &lt;abbr&gt; element</a></li>
 <li>Other elements conveying <a href="/en-US/docs/HTML/Text_level_semantics_conveying_elements" title="HTML/Text level semantics conveying elements">text-level semantics</a>: {{HTMLElement("a")}}, {{HTMLElement("em")}}, {{HTMLElement("strong")}}, {{HTMLElement("small")}}, {{HTMLElement("cite")}}, {{HTMLElement("q")}}, {{HTMLElement("dfn")}}, {{HTMLElement("time")}}, {{HTMLElement("code")}}, {{HTMLElement("var")}}, {{HTMLElement("samp")}}, {{HTMLElement("kbd")}}, {{HTMLElement("sub")}}, {{HTMLElement("sup")}}, {{HTMLElement("b")}}, {{HTMLElement("i")}}, {{HTMLElement("mark")}}, {{HTMLElement("ruby")}}, {{HTMLElement("rp")}}, {{HTMLElement("rt")}}, {{HTMLElement("bdo")}}, {{HTMLElement("span")}}, {{HTMLElement("br")}}, {{HTMLElement("wbr")}}.</li>
</ul>

<div>{{HTMLRef}}</div>