<meta>

Published Jun 20, 2021Updated Jul 1, 2022

The <meta> element represents an interface to provide metadata pertaining to the document. Metadata is data that is used to describe the document that contains it. The <meta> element must be placed inside the <head> element of the document.

Syntax

<meta />

The <meta> element that has no closing tag, meaning that it cannot have elements inside of it. It uses attributes to set properties, some common attributes are:

charset: describes the character encoding used when writing the document
name: describes the type of meta tag, may include things like "author", "description", "keywords", and "color-scheme"
content: accompanies name to provide the appropriate content specific to the value of name.

Example

<html>
  <head>
    <!-- Sets the character set used to create this HTML file -->
    <meta charset="utf-8" />
    <!-- Details the author of the document -->
    <meta name="author" content="Jasmine the Gorilla" />
    <!-- Provides a description used to improve discovery in search engines -->
    <meta
      name="description"
      content="A short fable about the origin of bananas, and the joy they provide."
    />
    <!-- Sets the color scheme to dark if possible, but lets the browser know that light will render correctly, too -->
    <meta name="color-scheme" content="dark light" />
  </head>

  <body></body>
</html>