SMALL - Small Font

The SMALL element suggests that text be rendered in a smaller font. Since HTML 4.0 has no element to indicate de-emphasis, SMALL is often useful for this purpose. For example:

<P><SMALL>Copyright © 1998 Liam Quinn. All rights reserved.</SMALL></P>

Most browsers support nested SMALL elements, but this practice should be avoided. Since different users have different font sizes and eyesight, significant changes in font size can leave text too small to read even though it may look fine to the author.

Using style sheets in place of SMALL provides greater flexibility in changing the presentation. The previous example could also be marked up as follows:

<P CLASS=copyright>Copyright © 1998 Liam Quinn. All rights reserved.</P>

This could then be linked to the following style sheet:

.copyright {
  font-size: smaller;
  text-align: center
}

@media aural {
  .copyright { volume: soft }
}

More Information

• SMALL in W3C HTML 4.0 Recommendation
• SMALL in W3C HTML 3.2 Recommendation
• SMALL in WDG HTML 3.2 Reference
• SMALL in Learning HTML 3.2 by Examples