CAPTION - Table Caption

The CAPTION element defines a table caption. When used, CAPTION must be the first element in the TABLE. Only inline elements (e.g., STRONG) may be used within CAPTION.

A good caption should provide a short heading for the table. For simple tables, the caption can also act as an adequate summary, but for more complex tables, authors should supplement the CAPTION with a full summary, either through TABLE's SUMMARY attribute or within a paragraph outside of the TABLE. The following example features a simple table where the CAPTION provides a heading and an adequate table summary:

<TABLE>
  <CAPTION>Common Usenet Abbreviations</CAPTION>
  <THEAD>
    <TR>
      <TH>Abbreviation</TH>
      <TH>Long Form</TH>
    </TR>
  </THEAD>
  <TBODY>
    <TR>
      <TD>AFAIK</TD>
      <TD>As Far As I Know</TD>
    </TR>
    <TR>
      <TD>IMHO</TD>
      <TD>In My Humble Opinion</TD>
    </TR>
    <TR>
      <TD>OTOH</TD>
      <TD>On The Other Hand</TD>
    </TR>
  </TBODY>
</TABLE>

The next example uses TABLE's SUMMARY attribute to complement the CAPTION:

<TABLE SUMMARY="This table gives the character entity reference,
                decimal character reference, and hexadecimal character
                reference for symbols and Greek letters.">
  <CAPTION>Symbols and Greek Letters in HTML 4.0</CAPTION>
  <COLGROUP>
  <COLGROUP SPAN=3>
  <THEAD>
    <TR>
      <TH SCOPE=col>Character</TH>
      <TH SCOPE=col>Entity</TH>
      <TH SCOPE=col>Decimal</TH>
      <TH SCOPE=col>Hex</TH>
    </TR>
  </THEAD>
  <TBODY>
    <TR>
      <TD SCOPE=row>Latin small f with hook</TD>
      <TD>&amp;fnof;</TD>
      <TD>&amp;#402;</TD>
      <TD>&amp;#x192;</TD>
    </TR>
    ...
  </TBODY>
</TABLE>

More Information

• CAPTION in W3C HTML 4.0 Recommendation
• CAPTION in W3C HTML 3.2 Recommendation
• CAPTION in WDG HTML 3.2 Reference
• CAPTION in Learning HTML 3.2 by Examples

Copyright © 1998 by Liam Quinn. This material may be distributed only subject to the terms and conditions set forth in the Open Publication License, v1.0 or later (the latest version is presently available at http://www.opencontent.org/openpub/).