<col>: The Table Column element

The <col> HTML element defines a column within a table and is used for defining common semantics on all common cells. It is generally found within a <colgroup> element.

Try it

<col> allows styling columns using CSS, but only a few properties will have an effect on the column (see the CSS 2.1 specification for a list).

Attributes

This element includes the global attributes.

span

This attribute contains a positive integer indicating the number of consecutive columns the <col> element spans. If not present, its default value is 1.

Deprecated attributes

The following attributes are deprecated and should not be used. They are documented below for reference when updating existing code and for historical interest only.

align

This enumerated attribute specifies how horizontal alignment of each column cell content will be handled. Possible values are:

  • left, aligning the content to the left of the cell
  • center, centering the content in the cell
  • right, aligning the content to the right of the cell
  • justify, inserting spaces into the textual content so that the content is justified in the cell

If this attribute is not set, its value is inherited from the align of the <colgroup> element this <col> element belongs too. If there are none, the left value is assumed.

Note: To achieve the same effect as the left, center, right or justify values, do not try to set the text-align property on a selector giving a <col> element. Because <td> elements are not descendant of the <col> element, they won't inherit it.

If the table doesn't use a colspan attribute, use the td:nth-child(an+b) CSS selector. Set a to zero and b to the position of the column in the table, e.g. td:nth-child(2) { text-align: right; } to right-align the second column.

If the table does use a colspan attribute, the effect can be achieved by combining adequate CSS attribute selectors like [colspan=n], though this is not trivial.

bgcolor

The background color of the table. It is a 6-digit hexadecimal RGB code, prefixed by a '#'. One of the predefined color keywords can also be used.

To achieve a similar effect, use the CSS background-color property.

char

This attribute sets the character to align the cells in a column on. Typical values for this include a period (.) when attempting to align numbers or monetary values. If align is not set to char, this attribute is ignored.

charoff

This attribute is used to indicate the number of characters to offset the column data from the alignment characters specified by the char attribute.

valign

This attribute specifies the vertical alignment of the text within each cell of the column. Possible values for this attribute are:

  • baseline, which will put the text as close to the bottom of the cell as it is possible, but align it on the baseline of the characters instead of the bottom of them. If characters are all of the size, this has the same effect as bottom.
  • bottom, which will put the text as close to the bottom of the cell as it is possible;
  • middle, which will center the text in the cell;
  • and top, which will put the text as close to the top of the cell as it is possible.

Note: Do not try to set the vertical-align property on a selector giving a <col> element. Because <td> elements are not descendant of the <col> element, they won't inherit it.

If the table doesn't use a colspan attribute, use the td:nth-child(an+b) CSS selector where 'a' is the total number of the columns in the table and 'b' is the ordinal position of the column in the table. Only after this selector the vertical-align property can be used.

If the table does use a colspan attribute, the effect can be achieved by combining adequate CSS attribute selectors like [colspan=n], though this is not trivial.

width

This attribute specifies a default width for each column in the current column group. In addition to the standard pixel and percentage values, this attribute might take the special form 0*, which means that the width of each column in the group should be the minimum width necessary to hold the column's contents. Relative widths such as 5* also can be used.

Examples

Please see the <table> page for examples on <col>.

Technical summary

Content categories None.
Permitted content None; it is a void element.
Tag omission It must have start tag, but must not have an end tag.
Permitted parents <colgroup> only, though it can be implicitly defined as its start tag is not mandatory. The <colgroup> must not have a span attribute.
Implicit ARIA role No corresponding role
Permitted ARIA roles No role permitted
DOM interface HTMLTableColElement

Specifications

Specification
HTML Standard
# the-col-element

Browser compatibility

BCD tables only load in the browser

See also

  • CSS properties and pseudo-classes that may be specially useful to style the <col> element:
    • the width property to control the width of the column;
    • the :nth-child pseudo-class to set the alignment on the cells of the column;
    • the text-align property to align all cells content on the same character, like '.'.