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 XHTML 1.0</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 4.01 Recommendation
• caption in W3C HTML 3.2 Recommendation
• caption in WDG HTML 3.2 Reference
• caption in Learning HTML 3.2 by Examples