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The HTML <head> Element

The <head> element is a container for metadata (data about data) and is placed between the <html> tag and the <body> tag.

HTML metadata is data about the HTML document. Metadata is not displayed. Metadata typically define the document title, character set, styles, scripts, and other meta information.

Common Tags in <head>

The following elements can go inside the <head> element:

  • The <title> element defines the title of the document, which is required in all HTML documents.
  • The <style> element is used to define style information for a single HTML page.
  • The <link> tag is most often used to link to external style sheets.
  • The <meta> element is used to specify character set, page description, keywords, author of the document, and viewport settings.
  • The <script> tag is used to define client-side JavaScripts.
  • The <base> element specifies the base URL/target for all relative URLs in a page.
html
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
  <title>My Page Title</title>
  <meta charset="UTF-8">
  <meta name="description" content="Free Web tutorials">
  <meta name="keywords" content="HTML, CSS, JavaScript">
  <meta name="author" content="John Doe">
  <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
</head>
<body>

The content of the document......

</body>
</html>

Test Yourself with an Exercise

Which element is NOT typically found inside the <head> section?