Revision 535075 of <b>

<h2 id="Summary">Summary</h2>
<p>The <strong>HTML <code>&lt;b&gt;</code> Element</strong> represents a span of text stylistically different from normal text, without conveying any special importance or relevance. It is typically used for keywords in a summary, product names in a review, or other spans of text whose typical presentation would be boldfaced. Another example of its use is to mark the lead sentence of each paragraph of an article.</p>
<div class="note">
 <p><strong>Usage notes:</strong></p>
 <ul>
  <li>Do not confuse the <code>&lt;b&gt;</code> element with the {{HTMLElement("strong")}}, {{HTMLElement("em")}}, or {{HTMLElement("mark")}} elements. The {{HTMLElement("strong")}} element represents text of certain <em>importance</em>, {{HTMLElement("em")}} puts some emphasis on the text and the {{HTMLElement("mark")}} element represents text of certain <em>relevance</em>. The <code>&lt;b&gt;</code> element doesn't convey such special semantic information; use it only when no others fit.</li>
  <li>Similarly, do not mark titles and headings using the <code>&lt;b&gt;</code> element. For this purpose, use the {{HTMLElement("h1")}} to {{HTMLElement("h6")}} tags. Further, stylesheets can change the default style of these elements, with the result that they are not <em>necessaril</em><em>y</em><em> </em>displayed in bold.</li>
  <li>It is a good practice to use the <strong>class</strong> attribute on the <code>&lt;b&gt;</code> in order to convey additional semantic information (for example <code>&lt;b class="lede"&gt;</code> for the first sentence in a paragraph). This eases the development of several stylings of a web document, without the need to change its HTML code.</li>
  <li>Historically, the <code>&lt;b&gt;</code> element was meant to make text boldface. Styling information has been deprecated since HTML4, so the meaning of the <code>&lt;b&gt;</code> element has been changed.</li>
  <li>If there is no semantic purpose on using the &lt;b&gt; element, using css property <a href="/en-US/docs/CSS/font-weight" title="font-weight">font-weight</a> with bold value would be a better choice for making text bold.</li>
 </ul>
</div>
<ul class="htmlelt">
 <li><dfn><a href="/en-US/docs/HTML/Content_categories" title="HTML/Content_categories">Content categories</a></dfn> <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.</li>
 <li><dfn>Permitted content</dfn> <a href="/en-US/docs/HTML/Content_categories#Phrasing_content" title="HTML/Content_categories#Phrasing_content">Phrasing content</a>.</li>
 <li><dfn>Tag omission</dfn> {{no_tag_omission}}</li>
 <li><dfn>Permitted parent elements</dfn> Any element that accepts <a href="/en-US/docs/HTML/Content_categories#Phrasing_content" title="HTML/Content_categories#Phrasing_content">phrasing content</a>.</li>
 <li><dfn>DOM interface</dfn> {{domxref("HTMLElement")}} Up to Gecko 1.9.2 (Firefox 4) inclusive, Firefox implements the <a href="/en-US/docs/DOM/span" title="DOM/span"><code>HTMLSpanElement</code></a> interface for this element.</li>
</ul>
<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>
<h2 id="Example">Example</h2>
<pre class="brush: html">
&lt;p&gt;
  This article describes several &lt;b&gt;text-level&lt;/b&gt; elements. It explains their usage in an &lt;b&gt;HTML&lt;/b&gt; document.   
&lt;/p&gt;
Keywords are displayed with the default style of the &lt;b&gt; element, likely in bold.
</pre>
<h3 id="Result">Result</h3>
<p>This article describes several <strong>text-level</strong> elements. It explains their usage in an <strong>HTML</strong> document.</p>
<p>Keywords are displayed with the default style of the &lt;b&gt; element, likely in bold.</p>
<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-b-element', '&lt;b&gt;')}}</td>
   <td>{{Spec2('HTML WHATWG')}}</td>
   <td>&nbsp;</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <td>{{SpecName('HTML5 W3C', 'text-level-semantics.html#the-b-element', '&lt;b&gt;')}}</td>
   <td>{{Spec2('HTML5 W3C')}}</td>
   <td>&nbsp;</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <td>{{SpecName('HTML4.01', 'present/graphics.html#h-15.2.1', '&lt;b&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>{{CompatVersionUnknown}}</td>
    <td>{{CompatGeckoDesktop("1.0")}}</td>
    <td>{{CompatVersionUnknown}}</td>
    <td>{{CompatVersionUnknown}}</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>{{CompatGeckoMobile("1.0")}}</td>
    <td>{{CompatVersionUnknown}}</td>
    <td>{{CompatVersionUnknown}}</td>
    <td>{{CompatVersionUnknown}}</td>
   </tr>
  </tbody>
 </table>
</div>
<h2 id="See_also">See also</h2>
<ul>
 <li>Others 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("abbr")}}, {{HTMLElement("time")}}, {{HTMLElement("code")}}, {{HTMLElement("var")}}, {{HTMLElement("samp")}}, {{HTMLElement("kbd")}}, {{HTMLElement("sub")}}, {{HTMLElement("sup")}}, {{HTMLElement("i")}}, {{HTMLElement("mark")}}, {{HTMLElement("ruby")}}, {{HTMLElement("rp")}}, {{HTMLElement("rt")}}, {{HTMLElement("bdo")}}, {{HTMLElement("span")}}, {{HTMLElement("br")}}, {{HTMLElement("wbr")}}.</li>
 <li><a class="external" href="https://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-b-and-i-tags">Using &lt;b&gt; and &lt;i&gt; elements (W3C)</a></li>
</ul>
<div>
 {{HTMLRef}}</div>