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4.4.7 The hgroup element

Categories
Flow content.
Heading content.
formatBlock candidate.
Contexts in which this element can be used:
Where flow content is expected.
Content model:
One or more h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, and/or h6 elements.
Content attributes:
Global attributes
DOM interface:
Uses HTMLElement.

The hgroup element represents the heading of a section. The element is used to group a set of h1–h6 elements when the heading has multiple levels, such as subheadings, alternative titles, or taglines.

For the purposes of document summaries, outlines, and the like, the text of hgroup elements is defined to be the text of the highest ranked h1–h6 element descendant of the hgroup element, if there are any such elements, and the first such element if there are multiple elements with that rank. If there are no such elements, then the text of the hgroup element is the empty string.

Other elements of heading content in the hgroup element indicate subheadings or subtitles.

The rank of an hgroup element is the rank of the highest-ranked h1–h6 element descendant of the hgroup element, if there are any such elements, or otherwise the same as for an h1 element (the highest rank).

The section on headings and sections defines how hgroup elements are assigned to individual sections.

Here are some examples of valid headings. In each case, the emphasized text represents the text that would be used as the heading in an application extracting heading data and ignoring subheadings.

<hgroup>
 <h1>The reality dysfunction</h1>
 <h2>Space is not the only void</h2>
</hgroup>

<hgroup>
 <h1>Dr. Strangelove</h1>
 <h2>Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb</h2>
</hgroup>

The point of using hgroup in these examples is to mask the h2 element (which acts as a secondary title) from the outline algorithm.