<th>

The HTML element table header cell <th> defines a cell as a header for a group of cells of a table. The group of cells that the header refers to is defined by the scope and headers attribute.

Usage context

Attributes

This element includes the global attributes.

abbr in HTML5

This attribute contains a short abbreviated description of the content of the cell. Some user-agent, like speech reader, may present it before the content itself.

Note: Do not use this attribute as it is obsolete in the latest standard: instead either consider starting the cell content by an independent abbreviated content itself or use the abbreviated content as the cell content and use the long content as the description of the cell by putting it in the title attribute.

align in HTML 4, in HTML5

This enumerated attribute specifies how horizontal alignment of each cell content will be handled. Possible values are:

• left, aligning the content to the left of the cell
• center, centering the content in the cell
• right, aligning the content to the right of the cell
• justify, inserting spaces into the textual content so that the content is justified in the cell
• char, aligning the textual content on a special character with a minimal offset, defined by the char and charoff attributes Unimplemented (see bug 2212).

If this attribute is not set, the left value is assumed.

Note: Do not use this attribute as it is obsolete (not supported) in the latest standard.

• To achieve the same effect as the left, center, right or justify values, use the CSS text-align property on it.
• To achieve the same effect as the char value, in CSS3, you can use the value of the char as the value of the text-align property Unimplemented.

axis in HTML5

This attribute contains a list of space-separated strings. Each string is the id of a group of cells that this header apply to.

Note: Do not use this attribute as it is obsolete in the latest standard: instead use the scope attribute.

bgcolor

This attribute defines the background color of each cell of the column. It is one of the 6-digit hexadecimal code as defined in sRGB, prefixed by a '#'. One of the sixteen predefined color strings may be used:

	black = "#000000"		green = "#008000"
	silver = "#C0C0C0"		lime = "#00FF00"
	gray = "#808080"		olive = "#808000"
	white = "#FFFFFF"		yellow = "#FFFF00"
	maroon = "#800000"		navy = "#000080"
	red = "#FF0000"		blue = "#0000FF"
	purple = "#800080"		teal = "#008080"
	fuchsia = "#FF00FF"		aqua = "#00FFFF"

Usage note: Do not use this attribute, as it is non-standard and only implemented in some versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer: the <th> element should be styled using CSS. To give a similar effect to the bgcolor attribute, use the CSS property background-color instead.

char in HTML 4, in HTML5

This attribute is used to set the character to align the cells in a column on. Typical values for this include a period (.) when attempting to align numbers or monetary values. If align is not set to char, this attribute is ignored.

Note: Do not use this attribute as it is obsolete (and not supported) in the latest standard. To achieve the same effect as the char, in CSS3, you can use the character set using the char attribute as the value of the text-align property Unimplemented.

charoff in HTML 4, in HTML5

This attribute is used to indicate the number of characters to offset the column data from the alignment characters specified by the char attribute.

Note: Do not use this attribute as it is obsolete (and not supported) in the latest standard.

colspan

This attribute contains a non-negative integer value that indicates on how many columns does the cell extend. Its default value is 1; if its value is set to 0, it does extend until the end of the <colgroup>, eventually implicitly defined, the cell belongs to. Values higher than 1000 are clipped down to 1000.

headers

This attributes a list of space-separated strings, each corresponding to the id attribute of the <th> elements that applies to this element.

rowspan

This attribute contains a non-negative integer value that indicates on how many rows does the cell extend. Its default value is 1; if its value is set to 0, it does extend until the end of the table section (<thead>, <tbody>, <tfoot>, eventually implicitly defined) the cell belongs to. Values higher than 65534 are clipped down to 65534.

scope

This enumerated attribute defines the cells that the header defined in this <th> element relates to. It may have the following values:

• row, where the header relates to all cells in the row that this element belongs to;
• col, where the header relates to all cells in the column that this element belongs to;
• rowgroup, where the header relates to all remaining cells in the row group that this element belongs to. The remaining cells are either those to the right of this element, or to its left depending of the value of the dir attribute defined on the <table> element;
• colgroup, where the header relates to all remaining cells in the column group that this element belongs to;
• auto

valign in HTML 4, in HTML5

This attribute specifies the vertical alignment of the text within each row of cells of the table header. Possible values for this attribute are:

• baseline, which will put the text as close to the bottom of the cell as it is possible, but align it on the baseline of the characters instead of the bottom of them. If characters are all of the size, this has the same effect as bottom.
• bottom, which will put the text as close to the bottom of the cell as it is possible;
• middle, which will center the text in the cell;
• and top, which will put the text as close to the top of the cell as it is possible.

Note: Do not use this attribute as it is obsolete (and not supported) in the latest standard: instead set the CSS vertical-align property on it.

width in HTML 4.01

This attribute is used to define a recommended cell width.  Properties cellspacing and cellpadding may add additional space, and element <col> width may also have some effect. In general, if a column's width is too narrow to show a particular cell properly, it, and thus the cells in it, may be widened when displayed.

Note: Do not use this attribute in the latest standard: instead set the CSS width property.

DOM interface

This element implements the HTMLTableHeaderCellElement interface.

Examples

See <table> for examples on <th>.

Browser compatibility

[1] See bug 915.

[2] See bug 2212.

See also

• Other table-related HTML Elements: <caption>, <col>, <colgroup>, <table>, <tbody>, <td>, <tfoot>, <thead>, <tr>.