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Usage

The title attribute should be used to provide an expansion of the abbreviation. If present, the attribute must only contain an expansion of the abbreviation.

Much virtual ink has been spilled debating the difference between acronyms (using the <acronym> element) and abbreviations (using the <abbr> element). In theory, abbreviations are spelled out letter by letter (so "HTTP" is pronounced "H, T, T, P") while acronyms are pronounced as words (so "ASCII" is pronounced "as-kee"). In practice, neither authors nor user agents got the distinction right, and the <acronym> element was simply dropped in HTML 5.

Browser compatibility

Compatibility table legend

| Test | IE8 | IE7 | IE6 | FF3 | FF2 | Saf3 | Op9 | Chrome | |:---------|:--------|:--------|:--------|:--------|:--------|:---------|:--------|:-----------| | appears in DOM | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | | applies style | Y | N | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y |

Further reading

• The abbr element in HTML 5
• The abbr element in HTML 4
• The abbr element on MSDN
• The history of the abbr element on blooberry.com
• The abbr element on The SitePoint HTML Reference