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<cite>

Name a work (book, film, article), not the author

— 1 min read

  • HTML
  • accessibility
  • semantics

<cite> — The work reference

The <cite> element designates the title of a creative work: a book, article, film, song, or standard. It does not designate the author of the quotation.

When to use it

You want to mention the title of a book, film, standard, or article. You do not use it for the author's name — the WHATWG spec says so explicitly.

What you gain

Accessibility: screen readers do not treat <cite> differently from regular text. The value is in the code: a developer or extraction tool knows this passage is a work title, not ordinary text.

Code example

<p>
  The concept is explored in depth in
  <cite>Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software</cite>
  by Gamma, Helm, Johnson, and Vlissides.
</p>

Further reading