br Element

Module

The br element is an inline element declared by the XHTML 1.1 Text Module (Inline Structural)

Elements in the Text Module are:
span | br (Inline Structural Support Module)
em | strong | q | cite | abbr | acronym | code | var | kbd | samp | dfn (Inline Phrasal Support Module)
div | p (Block Structural Support Module)
h1 - h6 | blockquote | pre | address (Block Phrasal Support Module)

Description

The br element is used to introduce a new line into normal inline text without having to start a new block-level element.

<p>This text is on the first line.<br />
This text is on the next line.</p>

Without the br, the displayed text would not contain the line break, even though the code is typed on two lines. Usually, newlines and tabs are not treated any differently than spaces and also each run of consecutive whitespace is condensed to a single space (except when whitespace is being preserved, such as within a pre element or when certain CSS declarations, e.g. white-space:pre, are used on an element). This means that you do not need to write the code above on two lines - the following would do just as well:

<p>This text is on the first line.<br />This text is on the next line.</p>

and so, in fact, would:

<p>This text is on the first line.<br /> This text is on the next line.</p>

This is because any whitespace immediately following a br element is not rendered (unless whitespace is being preserved within the parent element). For detailed information on CSS whitespace processing see: *CSS 2.1 - Whitespace: the 'white-space' property.

#REQUIRED Attributes

There are no #REQUIRED attributes on the br element.

Specific Attributes

There are no specific attributes declared on the br element.

Common Attributes

From the Core Attribute Collection

class [ type NMTOKENS ]

One or more space separated classes

id [ type ID ]

A unique identifier for the element

style [ type CDATA ], from the Style Attribute Module (deprecated)

Element-specific styles

title [ type Text ]

Descriptive title for the element (in some user agents this may appear as a "tooltip" when the mouse hovers over the element)

xmlns [ type URI - #FIXED 'http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml' ]

XML namespace

Content Model

EMPTY

See Content Model & Nesting for information about Content Model syntax and Nesting Groups.

Valid children of br

This element is empty and may have no children.

Valid parents of br

• From the Text Module: abbr, acronym, address, cite, code, dfn, div, em, h1 - h6, kbd, p, pre, q, samp, span, strong, var
• From the Hypertext Module: a
• From the List Module: dd, dt, li
• From the Tables Module: caption, td, th
• From the Forms Module: button, fieldset, label, legend
• From the Presentation Module: b, big, i, small, sub, sup, tt
• From the Edit Module: del, ins
• From the Bi-directional Text Module: bdo
• From the Object Module: object
• From the Ruby Annotation Module: rb, rt