p Element

 

Module

The p element is a block-level element declared by the XHTML 1.1 Text Module (Block 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 p element encloses a single paragraph of text and so it can contain only text and inline elements. You cannot, for example, include lists, forms, headings or tables within a paragraph. You can, however, include a line break (using the br element) if it makes sense to start a new line within your paragraph. User agents usually add top/bottom margins to paragraphs by default, so that adjacent paragraphs are vertically separated, but CSS can be used to style them as the author desires.

Although a p element may validly be empty, like so: <p></p>, this is discouraged. See, for HTML 4.01 at the W3C: *Paragraphs: the P element, which even goes so far as to say that user agents should ignore empty paragraphs - whether this is also intended to apply to XHTML is unclear, but there is obviously little semantic meaning to an empty paragraph and user agents do usually ignore them. Browsers may also ignore p elements which contain only whitespace or no printing characters (e.g. <p> <em> </em> </p>). Overall, it is best to remember that a paragraph is not really a paragraph unless it contains something visible - stick to CSS to control the spacing of items within a page.

In the example above, the vertical alignment of the image on its line can be controlled by the CSS vertical-align property (e.g. vertical-align:middle).

See also the div element.

#REQUIRED Attributes

There are no #REQUIRED attributes on the p element.

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Specific Attributes

There are no specific attributes declared on the p 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 p element is:

( #PCDATA | Inline.mix )*

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

Valid children of p

• #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 p

• From the Structure Module: body
• From the Text Module: blockquote, div
• From the List Module: dd, li
• From the Tables Module: td, th
• From the Forms Module: button, fieldset, form
• From the Client-side Image Map Module: map
• From the Scripting Module: noscript
• From the Edit Module: del, ins
• From the Object Module: object