The center element was introduced by Netscape and became widely used before the W3C-sanctioned div element came into being. It is clear, even from the HTML 3.2 documentation, that the HTML working group was never fond of this element. Momentum, however, carried the day, and this element found its way into the HTML 3.2 specification. The element is deprecated in HTML 4 in favor of the div element with a style sheet rule of text-align:center. In lieu of style sheets (but still deprecated in HTML 4), you can substitute a div element with align="center".

Content of a center element is aligned along an axis that runs down the middle of the next outermost containing elementusually the body or html element.

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.