The  HTML element is used to draw the reader's attention to the element's contents, which are not otherwise granted special importance. This was formerly known as the Boldface element, and most browsers still draw the text in boldface. However, you should not use  for styling text or granting importance. If you wish to create boldface text, you should use the CSS font-weight property. If you wish to indicate an element is of special importance, you should use the  element.

This element only includes the global attributes.

Use the  for cases like keywords in a summary, product names in a review, or other spans of text whose typical presentation would be boldfaced (but not including any special importance).
Do not confuse the  element with the , , or  elements. The  element represents text of certain importance,  puts some emphasis on the text and the  element represents text of certain relevance. The  element doesn't convey such special semantic information; use it only when no others fit.
Similarly, do not mark titles and headings using the  element. For this purpose, use the h1 to h6 tags. Further, stylesheets can change the default style of these elements, with the result that they are not necessarily displayed in bold.
It is a good practice to use the class attribute on the  element in order to convey additional semantic information as needed (for example  for the first sentence in a paragraph). This makes it easier to manage multiple use cases of  if your stylistic needs change, without the need to change all of its uses in the HTML.
Historically, the  element was meant to make text boldface. Styling information has been deprecated since HTML4, so the meaning of the  element has been changed.
If there is no semantic purpose to using the  element, you should use the CSS font-weight property with the value "bold" instead in order to make text bold.

html

<p>
  This article describes several <b class="keywords">text-level</b> elements. It
  explains their usage in an <b class="keywords">HTML</b> document.
</p>
Keywords are displayed with the default style of the
<b>element, likely in bold.</b>

Content categories	Flow content, phrasing content, palpable content.
Permitted content	Phrasing content.
Tag omission	None, both the starting and ending tag are mandatory.
Permitted parents	Any element that accepts phrasing content.
Implicit ARIA role	`generic`
Permitted ARIA roles	Any
DOM interface	`HTMLElement`

	Desktop						Mobile
	Chrome	Edge	Firefox	Internet Explorer	Opera	Safari	WebView Android	Chrome Android	Firefox for Android	Opera Android	Safari on IOS	Samsung Internet
`b`	1	12	1 Before Firefox 4, this element implemented the `HTMLSpanElement` interface instead of the standard `HTMLElement` interface.	Yes	15	1	4.4	18	4	14	1	1.0

<b>: The Bring Attention To element

Try it

Attributes

Usage notes

Examples

Result

Technical summary

Specifications

Browser compatibility

See also