The HTML <br>
element produces a line break in text (carriage-return). It is useful for writing a poem or an address, where the division of lines is significant.
The source for this interactive example is stored in a GitHub repository. If you'd like to contribute to the interactive examples project, please clone https://github.com/mdn/interactive-examples and send us a pull request.
As you can see from the above example, a <br>
element is included at each point where we want the text to break. The text after the <br>
begins again at the start of the next line of the text block.
Note: Do not use <br>
to create margins between paragraphs; wrap them in <p>
elements and use the CSS margin
property to control their size.
Attributes
This element's attributes include the global attributes.
Deprecated attributes
clear
- Indicates where to begin the next line after the break.
Styling with CSS
The <br>
element has a single, well-defined purpose — to create a line break in a block of text. As such, it has no dimensions or visual output of its own, and there is very little you can do to style it.
You can set a margin
on <br>
elements themselves to increase the spacing between the lines of text in the block, but this is a bad practice — you should use the line-height
property that was designed for that purpose.
Examples
Simple br
In the following example we use <br>
elements to create line breaks between the different lines of a postal address:
Mozilla<br> 331 E. Evelyn Avenue<br> Mountain View, CA<br> 94041<br> USA<br>
The result looks like so:
Accessibility concerns
Creating separate paragraphs of text using <br>
is not only bad practice, it is problematic for people who navigate with the aid of screen reading technology. Screen readers may announce the presence of the element, but not any content contained within <br>
s. This can be a confusing and frustrating experience for the person using the screen reader.
Use <p>
elements, and use CSS properties like margin
to control their spacing.
Technical summary
Content categories | Flow content, phrasing content. |
---|---|
Permitted content | None, it is an empty element. |
Tag omission | Must have a start tag, and must not have an end tag. In XHTML documents, write this element as <br /> . |
Permitted parents | Any element that accepts phrasing content. |
Implicit ARIA role | No corresponding role |
Permitted ARIA roles | none , presentation |
DOM interface | HTMLBRElement |
Specifications
Specification | Status | Comment |
---|---|---|
HTML Living Standard The definition of '<br>' in that specification. |
Living Standard | |
HTML5 The definition of '<br>' in that specification. |
Recommendation | |
HTML 4.01 Specification The definition of '<br>' in that specification. |
Recommendation |
Browser compatibility
Desktop | Mobile | |||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
br | Chrome Full support 1 | Edge Full support 12 | Firefox Full support 1 | IE Full support Yes | Opera Full support Yes | Safari Full support Yes | WebView Android Full support Yes | Chrome Android Full support Yes | Firefox Android Full support 4 | Opera Android Full support Yes | Safari iOS Full support Yes | Samsung Internet Android Full support Yes |
clear | Chrome Full support 1 | Edge Full support 12 | Firefox Full support 1 | IE Full support Yes | Opera Full support Yes | Safari Full support Yes | WebView Android Full support Yes | Chrome Android Full support Yes | Firefox Android Full support 4 | Opera Android Full support Yes | Safari iOS Full support Yes | Samsung Internet Android Full support Yes |
Legend
- Full support
- Full support
- Deprecated. Not for use in new websites.
- Deprecated. Not for use in new websites.