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      Web technology reference for developers

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      Structure of content on the web

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      Code used to describe document style

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      General-purpose scripting language

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  1. References
  2. HTML
  3. Reference
  4. Elements
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In this article

  • Attributes
  • DOM Interface
  • Examples
  • Default styling
  • Specifications
  • Browser compatibility
  • See also
  1. HTML
  2. Guides
  3. Content categories
  4. Comments
  5. Date and time formats
  6. Constraint validation
  7. Viewport meta element
  8. Responsive images
  9. Microdata
  10. Microformats
  11. Quirks and standards modes
  12. HTML cheatsheet
  13. How to
  14. Define terms with HTML
  15. Use data attributes
  16. Use cross-origin images
  17. Add a hitmap on top of an image
  18. Author fast-loading HTML pages
  19. Add JavaScript
  20. Reference
  21. Elements
    3. Deprecated
    13. Deprecated

    20. Deprecated
    32. Deprecated
    38. Experimental
    42. Deprecated
    45. Deprecated
    46. Deprecated

Default styling

Though the purpose of this tag is purely for the convenience of the author, its default styling varies from one browser to another:

  • Opera, Firefox, Chrome, and some others add a dotted underline to the content of the element.
  • A few browsers not only add a dotted underline, but also put it in small caps; to avoid this styling, adding something like font-variant: none in the CSS takes care of this case.

It is therefore recommended that web authors either explicitly style this element, or accept some cross-browser variation.

Specifications

Specification
HTML
# acronym

Browser compatibility

See also

  • The HTML element

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This page was last modified on Apr 10, 2025 by MDN contributors.

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