Wikipedia:Span tags
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For a list of classes that can be used with the span tag, see WP:Catalogue of CSS classes.
In Wikipedia, Span tags are used to group logically related text. They allow:
- Explicitly setting the CSS style for an inline run of text
- Explicitly setting the language for a run of text (for cases where the rendering differs from language to language, through
{{Lang}}
) - Explicitly setting the direction of the text (LTR or RTL).
- Avoidance of other HTML tags, such as <s> and <strike>, which would otherwise be used as workarounds, but are less suitable.
- Syntax highlighting; code excerpts can be colorized for easier reading, customizable with CSS.
- Various uses in infoboxes and navigational templates.
- Specification of class and id attributes for certain boilerplate messages which should be inlined; e.g. {{merge}}.
- Citation templates (see above).
Almost all HTML tags that are allowed in Wikipedia permit inline CSS styles.
History[edit]
Span tags were enabled in MediaWiki on December 23, 2004. Polls were held in May and August 2004 on whether the English Wikipedia should enable <span> tags. The results were equally split between supporting and opposing the addition of these tags. In December, the earlier objections that this would be a semantically void element were deemed to be no longer applicable since MediaWiki now has a way to add to the global stylesheets in the wiki (at least for the main skins). The addition of <span> to the whitelist was announced following no general objection amongst developers.
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