The address Tag

The address tag marks contact information: a street address, an email, a phone number, a social handle. Browsers and search engines treat these lines as contact details, not body text, and screen readers can navigate straight to them. It gives the browser a predictable place to find out who wrote the page.

It has a narrower job than it sounds. Address is meant for the contact info of the nearest article, or of the page itself. An address mentioned in passing, like the location of a restaurant inside a review, is plain text and belongs in a normal paragraph.

It works in every browser, renders in italics by default, and pairs naturally with mailto and tel links. Why it exists: contact blocks were just paragraphs, and there was no standard way to find the author of a page. Address gives the page a predictable place for that information.

What goes inside

Wrap links in address. An email can be a mailto link and a phone number a tel link, both inside the address element. Use br tags or a block structure to stack the lines. The browser renders address text in italics by default, which you can change with CSS.

<address>
  Written by <a href="mailto:maya@example.com">Maya Chen</a>.<br>
  12 Main Street, Austin, TX.<br>
  <a href="tel:+15125550123">(512) 555-0123</a>
</address>

Placing it on the page

The address usually sits in the footer of an article or the page. Search engines and assistive tools look for it there. Put the contact block inside a footer element for a clean semantic structure, and keep it short: name, email, and one way to reach the person.

Syntax

<address>
  <a href="mailto:hi@example.com">hi@example.com</a>
</address>

<address>Contact author: <a href="mailto:hi@example.com">hi@example.com</a></address>
<!-- For venue: --><p itemscope itemprop="location">Box 564, Disneyland</p>