<CAPTION>NN all IE all HTML 3.2  

<CAPTION>...</CAPTION>

HTML End Tag: Required  

A caption element may be placed only inside a table element (and immediately after the <TABLE> start tag) to denote the text to be used as a caption for the table. A caption applies to the entire table, whereas a table heading (th element) applies to a single column or row of the table. Only one caption element is recognized within a table element.

A table caption is usually a brief description of the table. A longer description may be written for the summary attribute of a table element for browsers that use text-to-speech technology. The primary distinguishing attribute of the caption element is align. Although deprecated in HTML 4, it lets you define where the caption appears in relation to the actual table.

 
Example
  
<TABLE ...>
<CAPTION class="tableCaptions">
   Table 3-2. Sample Inverse Framistan Values
</CAPTION>
...
</TABLE>
 
Object Model Reference
  
[window.]document.getElementById(elementID)
 
Element-Specific Attributes
 
alignvalign
 
Element-Specific Event Handler Attributes

None.
alignNN all IE all HTML 3.2  

align="where"

Optional  

Determines how the caption is rendered in physical relation to the table. Not all versions of all browsers support the full range of possibilities for this attribute. Only top and bottom are universal among supporting browsers.

Browsers typically render a caption above or below a table in the running body font (unless modified by tag or style sheet) and centered horizontally on the table. If the caption is wider than the table, text is wrapped to the next line, maintaining center justification.

The align attribute is deprecated in HTML 4.0 in favor of the text-align and vertical-align style sheet attributes.

 
Example
  
<CAPTION align="top">Table II. Stock List</CAPTION>
 
Value

Acceptable string values for this attribute vary with browser version. Select the one(s) from the following table that work for your deployment.

For implementation details, see the discussion of text alignment within a containing box in the Section 8.1.5 at the beginning of this chapter.

 
Default

top (in IE, center if valign attribute is also set).

 
Object Model Reference
  
[window.]document.getElementById(elementID).align
langNN 3 IE 4 HTML 4  

lang="languageCode"

Optional  

The language being used for the element's attribute values and content. A browser can use this information to assist in proper rendering of content with respect to details such as treatment of ligatures (when supported by a particular font or required by a written language), quotation marks, and hyphenation. Other applications and search engines might use this information to aid the selection of spell-checking dictionaries and the creation of indices.

 
Example
  
<SPAN lang="de">Deutsche Bundesbahn</SPAN>
 
Value

Case-insensitive language code.
 
Default

Browser default.
 
Object Model Reference
  
[window.]document.getElementById(elementID).lang
valignNN n/a IE 3 HTML n/a  

valign="where"

Optional  

The valign attribute was Internet Explorer's early attribute for placing a table caption above or below the table. Although this attribute is now a part of the align attribute, IE's special way of handling left, center, and right values of the align attribute give valign something to do. For example, you can use valign to set the caption below the table, and use align="right" to right-align the caption at the bottom. This combination is not possible with the HTML 4 attribute.

 
Example
  
<CAPTION align="right" valign="bottom">Table 3-2. Fiber Content.</CAPTION>
 
Value

Two possible case-insensitive values: bottom | top.

 
Default

top
 
Object Model Reference
  
[window.]document.getElementById(elementID).valign