HTML 5 <th> Tag

The HTML <th> tag is used for specifying a header cell (or table header) within a table.

This tag must be nested inside a <tr> tag, which in turn must also be nested correctly. You can find out more by viewing the <table> tag specifications.

Also see the <td> tag for declaring table data.

Demo

Attributes

HTML tags can contain one or more attributes. Attributes are added to a tag to provide the browser with more information about how the tag should appear or behave. Attributes consist of a name and a value separated by an equals (=) sign, with the value surrounded by double quotes. Here's an example, style="color:black;".

There are 3 kinds of attributes that you can add to your HTML tags: Element-specific, global, and event handler content attributes.

The attributes that you can add to this tag are listed below.

Element-Specific Attributes

The following table shows the attributes that are specific to this tag/element.

AttributeDescription
colspanSpecifies the number of columns the current cell spans across.
rowspanSpecifies the number of rows the current cell spans across.
headersSpecifies a space-separated list of header cells that contain information about this cell. The value needs to correspond with the id of the header cell (which is set using the id attribute). This attribute is useful for non-visual browsers.
scopeThis attribute is used on header cells and specifies the cells that will use this header's information.

Possible values:

  • row (current row)
  • col (current column)
  • rowgroup (current rowgroup)
  • colgroup (current column group)
abbrSpecifies an alternative label for the header cell. For example, this could be an abbreviated form of the full header cell, an expansion, or different phrasing.

Global Attributes

The following attributes are standard across all HTML 5 tags.

For a full explanation of these attributes, see HTML 5 global attributes.

Event Handler Content Attributes

Event handler content attributes enable you to invoke a script from within your HTML. The script is invoked when a certain "event" occurs. Each event handler content attribute deals with a different event.

Here are the standard HTML 5 event handler content attributes.

For a full explanation of these attributes, see HTML 5 event handler content attributes.