<rp>: The Ruby Fallback Parenthesis element

The HTML Ruby Fallback Parenthesis (<rp>) element is used to provide fall-back parentheses for browsers that do not support display of ruby annotations using the <ruby> element. One <rp> element should enclose each of the opening and closing parentheses that wrap the <rt> element that contains the annotation's text.

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.

Attributes

This element only includes the global attributes.

Usage notes

• Ruby annotations are for showing pronunciation of East Asian characters, like using Japanese furigana or Taiwanese bopomofo characters. The <rp> element is used in the case of lack of <ruby> element support; the <rp> content provides what should be displayed in order to indicate the presence of a ruby annotation, usually parentheses.

Examples

This example uses ruby annotations to display the Romaji equivalents for each character.

<ruby>
  漢 <rp>(</rp><rt>Kan</rt><rp>)</rp>
  字 <rp>(</rp><rt>ji</rt><rp>)</rp>
</ruby>

body {
  font-size: 22px;
}

The result looks like this in your browser:

The HTML above rendered by a browser without ruby support might look like this:

漢 (Kan) 字 (ji)

body {
  font-size: 22px;
}

See the article about the <ruby> element for further examples.

Specifications

Browser compatibility

See also

• <ruby>
• <rt>
• <rb>

• <rtc>