The HTML Bring Attention To element (<b>) is used to draw the
reader's attention to the element's contents, which are not otherwise
granted special importance.
This was formerly known as the
Boldface element, and most browsers still draw the text in boldface.
However, you should not use <b> for styling text; instead, you should
use the CSS
font-weight
property to create boldface text, or the
<strong>
element to indicate that text is of special importance.
Attributes
This element only supports the global attributes.
Usage notes
- Use the
<b>for cases like keywords in a summary, product names in a review, or other spans of text whose typical presentation would be boldfaced (but not including any special importance). - Do not confuse the
<b>element with the<strong>,<em>, or<mark>elements. The<strong>element represents text of certain importance,<em>puts some emphasis on the text and the<mark>element represents text of certain relevance. The<b>element doesn't convey such special semantic information; use it only when no others fit. - Similarly, do not mark titles and headings using the
<b>element. For this purpose, use the<h1>to<h6>tags. Further, stylesheets can change the default style of these elements, with the result that they are not necessarily displayed in bold. - It is a good practice to use the
classattribute on the<b>element in order to convey additional semantic information as needed (for example<b class="lead">for the first sentence in a paragraph). This makes it easier to manage multiple use cases of<b>if your stylistic needs change, without the need to change all of its uses in the HTML. - Historically, the
<b>element was meant to make text boldface. Styling information has been deprecated since HTML4, so the meaning of the<b>element has been changed. - If there is no semantic purpose to using the
<b>element, you should use the CSSfont-weightproperty with the value"bold"instead in order to make text bold.
Examples
HTML
<p>
This article describes several <b class="keywords">text-level</b> elements.
It explains their usage in an <b class="keywords">HTML</b> document.
</p>
Keywords are displayed with the default style of the <b>
element, likely in bold.
Result
| Desktop | Mobile | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chrome | Edge | Chrome | Edge | |
video | 3 | Yes | ? | No |