HTML pre tag

Note: If you don't know what an element/tag is and/or how you must use it we recommend you to read our HTML tags and attributes tutorial that you can find in our HTML tutorials section.

Description

The HTML pre element inserts a block of preformatted text. This is exclusively a visual element, as the semantic of the text remains the same with or without it. In fact, its specifications are exclusively for visual user agents.

To render this element, visual user agents should follow these guidelines:

• White space may be left intact, which means that consecutive spaces shouldn't be stripped.
• Text may be rendered with a fixed-pitch font, where all characters have the same width.
• Automatic word-wrap may be disabled, so text lines won't be splitted unless a line break is found.
• The bidirectional processing must not be disabled.

Examples

This is a piece of preformatted text, which means
that all characters in this text have the same width,
   that line breaks only occur when specified in the markup, and that
       white spaces appear unedited.

Attributes

id (name)

The "id" attribute assigns an identifier to the associated element. This identifier must be unique in the document and can be used to refer to that element in other instances (e.g., from client-side scripts).

class (cdata)

The "class" attribute assigns a class name (or a list of class names separated by spaces) to the container element. It's used together with style sheets and tells the browser the class (or classes) to which the element is associated with.

A class gives presentational attributes to elements (read more at the Cascading Style Sheets tutorial).

style (style)

This attribute is used to define presentational attributes for the containing element, and its value should be composed by style sheets properties. Although, in some cases, it can become useful, a better practice is to place presentational attributes in external files, relating them to elements with the "class" attribute. This way you keep the semantic and presentational parts of your document separated.

You can find more information about presentational attributes at the Cascading Style Sheets tutorial.

title (text)

The purpose of this attribute is to provide a title for the element. Its value must be a short and accurate description of the element. Browsers usually render it as a "tool tip" when the user puts the mouse pointer over the element for a small period of time.

lang (langcode)

Specifies the language of an element's content. The default value in "unknown".

When writing XHTML 1.0 documents, the attribute used to specify the language of an elements is "xml:lang". For forward and backward compatibility both attributes can be used simultaneously like in the example below. Note, that in XHTML 1.1 the "lang" attribute has been completely replaced by "xml:lang" and its use is no longer valid.

dir

This attribute indicates the direction in which the texts of the element must be read. This includes content, attribute values and tables. It has two possible values that are case-insensitive:

• RTL: Right to left.
• LTR: Left to right.

width (number)

This attribute has been deprecated in HTML 4.01. Therefore its use is no longer recommended.

This attribute indicates the desired width of the preformatted block in number of characters. This attribute is poorly supported by browsers.

Events

• onclick
• ondblclick
• onmousedown
• onmouseup
• onmouseover
• onmousemove
• onmouseout
• onkeypress
• onkeydown
• onkeyup

See a complete list and information about events in HTML