HTML <table> table Tag Reference

The <table> HTML/xHTML tag

The table tag divides content into a grid of rows and columns, with optional headers and footers.

It must contain table row <tr> and table data <td> tags.

When to use the <table> tag (semantic use)

Use the table tag for tabular data only, i.e. where the data describes a number of objects that have the same properties.

By “tabular data”, we mean that the contents of each row (or sometimes column) have a regular pattern. e.g. The first column in each row contains the date, the next one has the transaction id, the third has a value etc.

Never use tables for structuring the layout of the page, as they are semantically incorrect and also much less flexible than more generic containers, like <div>s. You can move divs around the page, float ‘em, position ‘em absolutely, stack ‘em etc. etc., and while you can do the same with table rows & cells, your markup won’t make any sense if the table contents are displayed out of sequence.

The  <table> tag is valid in all current versions of HTML and xHTML, and it should always have a closing </table> tag.

Example of <table> tag use