A quick fire list of semantic (X)HTML elements with brief notes on usage. POSH is the acronym for Plain Old Semantic HTML. POSH gives us an easy to remember acronym that encapsulates the simplicity, best practice and benefits of using semantic markup. You can learn more about POSH on microformats.org.

Block Elements

div

Provides meaningful divisions. Frequently nested and used to group related elements and content such as headers, sidebars, content area and footers.

h1-h6

The six levels of headings are used to introduce and describe sections of content. It is common practice to use only one h1 element on any one page—a page has one main heading and many sub sections with h2 and/or h3 headings.

p

The paragraph element is used to markup and deliniate a block of text.

blockquote

Indicates a large or substantial quote.

address

Indicates contact information for a document or a major part of a document. May be used in conjuction with the hCard microformat.

List Elements

ul

ol

li

Lists are used to represent grouped information best represented as a list. Often used to markup menus (a list of links). ol represents ordered list while ul represents unordered lists. li represents a single list item. Lists can be nested.

dl

dd

dt

Indicates a list of terms (dt) with their accompanying definitions (dd). Often used to markup FAQ's.

Inline Elements

a

Typically used with an href attribute to indicate an external resource or an anchored location within the same document.

abbr

Indicates a shortened form of a term or phrase. Often attributed with a title.

acronym

Used to markup acronyms, initialisms, and alphabetisms. Often attributed with a title.

em

Used to indicates emphasis. Emphasised text is in some way more significant than the text surrounding it.

strong

Used to indicate stronger emphasis. Similar to em but stronger.

cite

Indicates bibliographical information, personal quotations or references.

code

Indicates a sample of computer programming code.

dfn

Defines the first instance of a term in a document. The semantic value of dfn is debatable.

del

Indicates information which has been deleted from a document. Semantic replacement for the deprecated strike element.

ins

The opposite of del. Indicates inserted text added during revisions.

samp

Sample output from computer programs or scripts. Sample output may or may not be code.

span

Generic inline element used where a semantic element would be inappropriate. Span elements are considered to have no semantic value.

q

Indicates a inline quotation.

kbd

Indicates text to be entered by the user. Rarely used, but useful in circumstances where you are demonstrating the use of a program, along with code and samp.

sub

sup

Superscripting and subscripting of text. Often used to indicate footnote references.

var

Along with code, samp, kbd, the “variable” element indicates a variable (or program argument).

Form Elements

label

The label element is used to describe form elements.

Table Elements

table

Used to markup indicate tabular data.

thead

Defines a header region for a data table, which would normally contain the headers (th) for each column.

tfoot

Defines a footer region for a data table, which should include information referential to the columns of data.

tbody

The content region of a table.

caption

Describes the table. Essentially a heading for the table.

th

Table heading for rows columns. Indicate the type of information within the row or column.

td

A data cell, in which content is placed which corresponds to both the headers for the row and column.