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HTML HTML Forms Organizing Forms Fieldsets and Legends

Reuven Kishon
Reuven Kishon
5,270 Points

Why do we use <span> to insert the numbers 1 and 2 within the legend of the fieldsets?

Is there any particular reason, or are there other ways to achieve this that may be better? Some ways I can think of are:

1) Use a <p> or <div> element with a class of "number", instead of <span>

3) Use an h1, h2, h3, etc and target it more specifically in the CSS via a descendant selector such as:

legend h1 (or h2, h3, etc) {}

4) Or for that matter, user an h1, h2, h3 with a class of "number", then target it via a descedant class selector such as:

legend h1 (or h2, h3, etc).number{}

1 Answer

<div> and <span> both have no (semantic) meanings. While <div> is used to wrap things i.e. acting as a container, the <span> tag is used for inline content. So, if you would use a <h1> instead of a <span>, then not only it will take its own line, it also add a heading 1 to the document which might not be appropriate. Thus, it makes <span> more flexible as you can add it 'anywhere' to an existing content.

I hope this answers your question, otherwise let me know what might be still unclear to you.