A complete reference of HTML elements — every standard tag in HTML5, plus the legacy tags marked as deprecated. Each row classifies the tag by content category (sectioning, flow, phrasing, embedded, tabular, forms, etc.), whether it is a void (self-closing) element, whether it is deprecated, and a one-line description.
Pro tip: There are exactly 16 void elements in HTML5 (br, img, input, etc.) that take no closing tag. Memorizing them is one of those frontend interview gotchas — but with this list you can also just filter by is_void = Yes.
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About the HTML Elements Reference
HTML5 defines a precise content-category system that determines which elements can nest inside which others. The categories — flow, phrasing, sectioning, heading, embedded, interactive, scripting, metadata, palpable — govern what counts as valid markup. This dataset captures every standard element plus the legacy and deprecated ones that still appear in older codebases.
Common Use Cases
HTML parsers and sanitizers, accessibility validators, rich-text editors, content-management system markup pipelines, code-editor autocomplete dictionaries, static-analysis tools for legacy HTML, technical documentation, and frontend developer reference cards.
Column Reference
- tag — element name (e.g. div, span, h1).
- category — content category per the HTML living standard (Sectioning, Flow, Phrasing, Forms, Tabular, Embedded, Interactive, Scripting, Heading, List Item, Document Metadata, Sectioning Root, Root).
- is_void — Yes if the element is self-closing (no closing tag, no contents).
- is_deprecated — Yes if removed from HTML5 (still parsed by browsers for legacy reasons).
- description — one-line semantic description.
Void Elements
Void elements have no content and no closing tag: area, base, br, col, embed, hr, img, input, link, meta, source, track, wbr. They are written either as <br> in HTML or <br /> in XHTML. Browsers parse both. Other elements without explicit closing tags (like <p> in HTML4) are not void — they just have optional closing tags.
Deprecated Elements
Tags like <center>, <font>, <marquee>, <blink>, and the entire frameset family were removed from HTML5. Browsers still render them for backwards compatibility, but you should not author new pages with them. Filter is_deprecated = Yes to find what to remove from a legacy codebase.
