HTML Tutorials - Herong's Tutorial Examples - v2.30, by Herong Yang
Using Whitespace Characters
This section describes how whitespace can be used in HTML documents. Whitespaces characters are collapsed and trimmed in element contents of all elements except 'pre'.
Syntax rules about whitespace characters can be summarized as:
1. There are 5 characters are defined as whitespace characters in HTML specification:
U+0020 Space U+0009 Tab U+000A Line feed U+000C Form feed U+000D Carriage return
2. Whitespace characters are preserved in element attribute values.
3. Whitespace characters are preserved in "pre" element contents.
4. Any sequence of whitespace characters is collapsed into a single space character of U+0020 in any element contents.
5. Any leading and trailing whitespace characters are trimmed off from any element contents.
These rules give us the freedom to enter extra space characters and line breaks make the HTML document code easier to read. For example, the following code is easy to read:
<article> <section> <p> Twinkle, twinkle, little star, How I wonder what you are. Up above the world so high, Like a diamond in the sky. </p> </section> </article>
The following code is much harder to read. But it represents the same HTML document as the above code:
<article><section><p>Twinkle, twinkle, little star, How I wonder what you are. Up above the world so high, Like a diamond in the sky.</p> </section></article>
Table of Contents
Introduction of HTML5 Features
HTML Document Structure and Content
►HTML Document and Elements Syntax
Document Character Set and Encoding
Entering Comments in HTML Document
Opening and Closing Tags of Elements
Using Character Entity References
Using Numeric Character References
Displayed and Printed HTML Documents
Responsive Design of Web Pages