What HTML tags can I use on Dreamwidth?

There are a lot of HTML tags you can use in your Dreamwidth posts and comments. Here are the most commonly used tags and some examples to get you going.

Link: <a href...

This tag inserts a link to another web page. For example, to insert a link to https://dreamwidth.org that will show up with the text "Dreamwidth" use this syntax:

<a href="https://dreamwidth.org">Dreamwidth</a>

The link will display like this:

Dreamwidth

Bold: <b> or <strong>

These tags will bold the text within the tags. For example:

Ordinary text, <strong>strong text</strong>, <b>bold text</b>

Displays like this:

Ordinary text, strong text, bold text

Italic: <i> or <em>

These tags will italicise the text within the tags. For example:

Ordinary text, <em>emphasised text</em>, <i>italic text</i>

Displays like this:

Ordinary text, emphasised text, italic text

Quotes: <q> or <blockquote>

Use these to quote portions of other people's text. <q> is for short quotes that display in your paragraph text, <blockquote> is for longer quotes that display in a paragraph of their own. For example:

This paragraph includes a <q>short quote</q>, but <blockquote>longer quotes are displayed in their own paragraph block</blockquote>

Displays like this:

This paragraph includes a short quote, but

longer quotes are displayed in their own paragraph block

Newline: <br>

Use the <br> tag to indicate a new line starts at that point. Usually Dreamwidth is good about guessing this but if it guesses wrong, or if you select the "Don't autoformat" option for your comment or entry, then you can use this to indicate a new line. For example:

This is the first line<br>This is the second line

Displays like this:

This is the first line
This is the second line

Paragraphs: <p>

Use the <p> and </p> tags to enclose a paragraph of text. Usually Dreamwidth is good about guessing this but if it guesses wrong, or if you select "Don't autoformat" for your entry or comment, then you can use these tags to indicate the start and end of a paragraph. For example:

<p>Paragraph one.</p> <p>Paragraph two.</p>

Displays like this:

Paragraph one.

Paragraph two.

Other HTML

There are many other HTML tags you can use in your entries or comments, such as:

• Font styling tags: <big>, <del>, <font>, <s>/<strike>, <small>, <sup>, <sub>, <tt>, <u>
• Text type tags: <code>, <pre>, <dfn>, <kbd>, <marquee>, <pre>, <samp>, <var>, <xmp>
• Heading tags: <h1>, <h2>, <h3>, <h4>, <h5>, <h6>
• Table tags: <table>, <th>, <tr>, <td>, <tfoot>, <thead>, <tbody>, <caption>, <col>, <colgroup>
• Semantic markup tags: <div>, <span>, <abbr>, <acronym>, <address>, <cite>

Some of these tags may not display the way you're used to them displaying. This is because we use a "CSS reset" to strip formatting from many tags, in order to make the site display properly in all browsers. You can add the styling back to those tags using inline CSS.

There are also some Dreamwidth-specific markup tags you can use — for instance, to link to other users or to put some of your entry behind a "read more" cut.