<rb>

The <rb> element designates the base text for ruby annotations in East Asian languages. It must be within <ruby> tags and is often paired with <rt> for pronunciation guides and <rp> for fallback rendering.

Note: The <rb> tag is deprecated, meaning it’s no longer recommended for use in new projects. Instead, characters can be written directly within the <ruby> tags.

Syntax

<ruby>
  <rb>Base text goes here</rb>
  <rp>(</rp> <rt>Annotation text goes here</rt> <rp>)</rp>
</ruby>

Example

The example below showcases how the <rb> tag is used to transliterate the Chinese characters meaning 'I like to write code' inside a <ruby> element.

<ruby>
  <rb>我</rb><rt>I</rt> <rb>喜欢</rb><rt>like</rt> <rb>写</rb><rt>to write</rt>
  <rb>程序</rb><rt>code</rt>
</ruby>

This is what it looks like in the browser:

Another approach is to replace the English translations with Pinyin, which represents the Chinese characters using the Roman alphabet for pronunciation guidance. Here’s an example:

<ruby>
  <rb>我</rb><rt>wǒ</rt> <rb>喜欢</rb><rt>xǐ huān</rt> <rb>写</rb><rt>xiě</rt>
  <rb>程序</rb><rt>chéng xù</rt>
</ruby>

Running this code will display the following: