: The Emphasis element

The  HTML element marks text that has stress emphasis. The  element can be nested, with each level of nesting indicating a greater degree of emphasis.

Attributes

This element only includes the global attributes.

Usage notes

The  element is for words that have a stressed emphasis compared to surrounding text, which is often limited to a word or words of a sentence and affects the meaning of the sentence itself.

Typically this element is displayed in italic type. However, it should not be used to apply italic styling; use the CSS font-style property for that purpose. Use the <cite> element to mark the title of a work (book, play, song, etc.). Use the  element to mark text that is in an alternate tone or mood, which covers many common situations for italics such as scientific names or words in other languages. Use the  element to mark text that has greater importance than surrounding text.

vs.

Some developers may be confused by how multiple elements seemingly produce similar visual results.  and  are a common example, since they both italicize text. What's the difference? Which should you use?

By default, the visual result is the same. However, the semantic meaning is different. The  element represents stress emphasis of its contents, while the  element represents text that is set off from the normal prose, such as a foreign word, fictional character thoughts, or when the text refers to the definition of a word instead of representing its semantic meaning. (The title of a work, such as the name of a book or movie, should use <cite>.)

This means the right one to use depends on the situation. Neither is for purely decorative purposes, that's what CSS styling is for.

An example for  could be: "Just do it already!", or: "We had to do something about it". A person or software reading the text would pronounce the words in italics with an emphasis, using verbal stress.

An example for  could be: "The Queen Mary sailed last night". Here, there is no added emphasis or importance on the word "Queen Mary". It is merely indicated that the object in question is not a queen named Mary, but a ship named Queen Mary. Another example for  could be: "The word the is an article".

Examples

The  element is often used to indicate an implicit or explicit contrast.

html

<p>
  In HTML 5, what was previously called
  <em>block-level</em> content is now called <em>flow</em> content.
</p>

Result

Technical summary

Content categories	Flow content, phrasing content, palpable content.
Permitted content	Phrasing content.
Tag omission	None, both the starting and ending tag are mandatory.
Permitted parents	Any element that accepts phrasing content.
Implicit ARIA role	No corresponding role
Permitted ARIA roles	Any
DOM interface	`HTMLElement` Up to Gecko 1.9.2 (Firefox 4) inclusive, Firefox implements the `HTMLSpanElement` interface for this element.

Specifications

Specification
HTML Standard # the-em-element

Browser compatibility

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<em>: The Emphasis element

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