The ins element and its companion, del, define a format that shows which segments of a document's content have been marked up for insertion (or deletion) during the authoring process. This is far from a workflow management scheme, but in the hands of a supporting WYSIWYG HTML authoring tool, these elements can assist in controlling generational changes of a document in process.

Browsers that support this element render text contained by the element as underlined (whereas del elements are in a strikethrough style). The HTML 4 specification includes two potentially useful attributes for preserving hidden information about the date and time of the alteration and some descriptive text about the change.

A description of the reason for the change or other notation to be associated with the element, but normally hidden from view. In Netscape 6, the context menu for such an element contains a Properties choice, which leads to a displayed list of attributes and their values for the visitor. Or, your DHTML scripts can access the information through the element object's cite property, and add value to the presentation.

The date and time the insertion was made. This information is most likely to be added into a document with an HTML authoring tool designed to track content insertions and deletions. Data from this attribute can be recalled later as an audit trail to changes of the document. There can be only one datetime attribute value associated with a given ins element. In Netscape 6 the context menu for such an element contains a Properties choice, which leads to a displayed list of attributes and their values for the visitor. Or, your DHTML scripts can access the information through the element object's dateTime property, and add value to the presentation.

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.