i Element

 

Module

The i element is an inline element declared by the XHTML 1.1 Presentation Module (Inline Presentation)

Elements in the Presentation Module are:
big | small | sub | sup | i | b | tt (Inline Presentation Support Module)
hr (Block Presentation Support Module)

Description

The i element indicates that a section of text is to be rendered in italics.

In many instances, the use of this element is discouraged in favour of a more semantically informative element, which also has meaning in non-visual browsers. For instance, i would in most cases be better substituted by em unless the italicization has only visual significance and is not meant to place any additional emphasis upon the text. However, if it's only for visual effect, then the italicizing would be better controlled using CSS, so that content and presentation are well separated; personally I would not use the i element, but instead the CSS declaration font-style:italic.

See also the b element.

#REQUIRED Attributes

There are no #REQUIRED attributes on the i element.

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Specific Attributes

There are no specific attributes declared on the i element.

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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

From the I18N Attribute Collection

dir [ type Enumeration (ltr | rtl) ], from the Bi-directional Text Module

Left-to-right or right-to-left directionality

xml:lang [ type LanguageCode ]

A language code for the element

From the Events Attribute Collection

All attributes in the Events Attribute Collection are supported:
onclick, ondblclick, onmousedown, onmouseup, onmouseover, onmousemove, onmouseout, onkeypress, onkeydown, onkeyup

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Content Model

The Content Model for the i element is:

( #PCDATA | Inline.mix )*

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

Valid children of i

• #PCDATA
• From the Text Module: abbr, acronym, br, cite, code, dfn, em, kbd, q, samp, span, strong, var
• From the Hypertext Module: a
• From the Forms Module: button, input, label, select, textarea
• From the Images Module: img
• From the Presentation Module: b, big, i, small, sub, sup, tt
• From the Client-side Image Map Module: map
• From the Scripting Module: noscript, script
• From the Edit Module: del, ins
• From the Bi-directional Text Module: bdo
• From the Object Module: object
• From the Ruby Annotation Module: ruby

Valid parents of i

• 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