HTML <th> Tag
The <th> tag defines a header cell in an HTML table. It must be used as a child element of <tr>, which in its turn is declared in the <table> tag. To define a standard data cell the <td> tag is used.
The <th> tag can contain text, image, form, links or any other HTML element, that can be used in the body of the HTML document. The size of the table is automatically adjusted based on the size of its content.
By default, the content of the <th> tag is bold and centered. To change its look you can use CSS styles.
Note, that all the rows in the table contain an equal number of cells, which is equivalent to the number of cells in the longest row. If there are fewer cells in a row, then the browser will automatically fill the row, placing empty cells at the end of it.
If you need to emphasize that there is no data in other cells, then create cell without content where necessary.
The cells added by browser have no borders, and if they go after each other, they will be shown as one integrated cell.
Syntax <th>
<table>
<tr>
<th>...</th>
</tr>
</table>
Example
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Title of the document</title>
<style>
th, td {
padding: 10px;
border: 1px solid #666;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<table style="width:80%; margin:30px auto; border-collapse:collapse;">
<tr style="background-color:#1c87c9; color:#fff;">
<th>Month</th>
<th>Date</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>June</td>
<td>18.07.2018</td>
</tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>
Result
In this example our headings are "Month" and "Date", which we define using the <th> tags for each of them. Both tags we place in <tr> .
The colspan attribute is generally used with <th> tag to let the content span over multiple columns. Let’s see this in action.
Example
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Title of the document</title>
<style>
th, td {
padding: 10px;
border: 1px solid #666;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<table style="width:80%; margin:30px auto; border-collapse:collapse;">
<tr style="background-color:#1c87c9; color:#fff;">
<th colspan="2">Month and Date</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Jun</td>
<td>18.07.2014</td>
</tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>
Result
In this example the value of colspan attribute is “2”. It means that a header cell should span two columns.
Attributes
The <th> tag also supports the Global Attributes and the Event Attributes.
How to style <th> tag
Common properties to alter the visual weight/emphasis/size of text in <th> tag:?
- CSS font-style property sets the style of the font. normal | italic | oblique | initial | inherit
- CSS font-family property specifies a prioritized list of one or more font family names and/or generic family names for the selected element.
- CSS font-size property sets the size of the font.
- CSS font-weight property defines whether the font should be bold or thick. CSS text-transform Property controls text case and capitalization.
- CSS text-decoration property specifies the decoration added to text, and is a shorthand property for text-decoration-line, text-decoration-color, text-decoration-style
Coloring text in <th> tag:
- CSS color property describes the color of the text content and text decorations
- CSS background-color property sets the background color of an element.
Text layout styles for <th> tag:
- CSS text-indent property specifies the indentation of the first line in a text block.
- CSS text-overflow property specifies how overflowed content that is not displayed should be signaled to the user.
- CSS white-space property specifies how white-space inside an element is handled.
- CSS word-break property specifies where the lines should be broken.
Other properties worth looking at for <th> tag
- CSS text-shadow property adds shadow to text.
- CSS text-align-last property sets the alignment of the last line of the text.
- CSS line-height property specifies the height of a line.
- CSS letter-spacing property defines the spaces between letters/characters in a text.
- CSS word-spacing property: Allow setting the spacing between words.