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: The Table Head element

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The <thead> HTML element encapsulates a set of table rows ({{HTMLElement("tr")}}  elements), indicating that they comprise the head of a table with information about the table’s columns. This is usually in the form of column headers ({{HTMLElement("th")}}  elements).

{{EmbedInteractiveExample("pages/tabbed/thead.html","tabbed-taller")}} 

Attributes

This element includes the global attributes.

Deprecated attributes

The following attributes are deprecated and should not be used. They are documented below for reference when updating existing code and for historical interest only.

Usage notes

Examples

See {{HTMLElement("table")}}  for a complete table example introducing common standards and best practices.

Basic head structure

This example demonstrates a table divided into a head section with column headers and a body section with the table’s main data.

HTML

The <thead> and {{HTMLElement("tbody")}}  elements are used to structure the table rows into {{Glossary("semantics", "semantic")}}  sections. The <thead> element represents the head section of the table, which contains a row ({{HTMLElement("tr")}} ) of column headers cells ({{HTMLElement("th")}} ).

<table>
  <thead>
    <tr>
      <th>Student ID</th>
      <th>Name</th>
      <th>Major</th>
      <th>Credits</th>
    </tr>
  </thead>
  <tbody>
    <tr>
      <td>3741255</td>
      <td>Jones, Martha</td>
      <td>Computer Science</td>
      <td>240</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>3971244</td>
      <td>Nim, Victor</td>
      <td>Russian Literature</td>
      <td>220</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>4100332</td>
      <td>Petrov, Alexandra</td>
      <td>Astrophysics</td>
      <td>260</td>
    </tr>
  </tbody>
</table>

CSS

Some basic CSS is used to style and highlight the table head so that the headings of the columns stand out from the data in the table body.

thead {
  border-bottom: 2px solid rgb(160 160 160);
  text-align: center;
  background-color: #2c5e77;
  color: #fff;
}

tbody {
  background-color: #e4f0f5;
}

table {
  border-collapse: collapse;
  border: 2px solid rgb(140 140 140);
  font-family: sans-serif;
  font-size: 0.8rem;
  letter-spacing: 1px;
}

th,
td {
  border: 1px solid rgb(160 160 160);
  padding: 8px 10px;
}

tbody > tr > td:last-of-type {
  text-align: center;
}

Result

{{EmbedLiveSample("Basic_head_structure", 650, 140)}} 

Multiple head rows

This example demonstrates a table head section with two rows.

HTML

We extend the markup the table from the basic example in this example by including two table rows ({{HTMLElement("tr")}} ) within the <thead> element creating a multi-row table head. We included an additional column, splitting the student names into first and last names.

<table>
  <thead>
    <tr>
      <th rowspan="2">Student ID</th>
      <th colspan="2">Student</th>
      <th rowspan="2">Major</th>
      <th rowspan="2">Credits</th>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <th>First name</th>
      <th>Last name</th>
    </tr>
  </thead>
  <tbody>
    <tr>
      <td>3741255</td>
      <td>Martha</td>
      <td>Jones</td>
      <td>Computer Science</td>
      <td>240</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>3971244</td>
      <td>Victor</td>
      <td>Nim</td>
      <td>Russian Literature</td>
      <td>220</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>4100332</td>
      <td>Alexandra</td>
      <td>Petrov</td>
      <td>Astrophysics</td>
      <td>260</td>
    </tr>
  </tbody>
</table>

Cell spanning

In order to associate and line up the header cells with the correct columns and rows, the colspan and rowspan attributes are used on the {{HTMLElement("th")}}  elements. The values set in these attributes specify how many cells each header cell ({{HTMLElement("th")}} ) spans. Due to the way these attributes are set, the two second-row header cells are lined up with the columns they head. These each span one row and one column as the default values for the colspan and rowspan attributes are both 1.

The column and row spanning demonstrated by this example are illustrated in the following figure:

Illustration demonstrating column and row spanning of table cells: cells 1, 3, and 4 spanning one column and two rows each; cell 2 spanning two columns and one row; cells 5 and 6 span a single row and column each, fitting into the available cells that are the second and third columns in the second row

CSS

The CSS is unchanged from the previous example.

thead {
  border-bottom: 2px solid rgb(160 160 160);
  background-color: #2c5e77;
  color: #fff;
}

table {
  border-collapse: collapse;
  border: 2px solid rgb(140 140 140);
  font-family: sans-serif;
  font-size: 0.8rem;
  letter-spacing: 1px;
}

tbody {
  background-color: #e4f0f5;
}

th,
td {
  border: 1px solid rgb(160 160 160);
  padding: 8px 10px;
}

tbody > tr > td:last-of-type {
  text-align: center;
}

Result

{{EmbedLiveSample("Multiple_head_rows", 650, 180)}} 

Technical summary

Content categories None.
Permitted content Zero or more `{{HTMLElement("tr")}}`  elements.
Tag omission The start tag is mandatory. The end tag may be omitted if the <thead> element is immediately followed by a `{{HTMLElement("tbody")}}`  or `{{HTMLElement("tfoot")}}`  element.
Permitted parents A `{{HTMLElement("table")}}`  element. The <thead> must appear after any `{{HTMLElement("caption")}}`  and `{{HTMLElement("colgroup")}}`  elements, even implicitly defined, but before any `{{HTMLElement("tbody")}}` , `{{HTMLElement("tfoot")}}` , and `{{HTMLElement("tr")}}`  elements.
Implicit ARIA role rowgroup
Permitted ARIA roles Any
DOM interface `{{domxref("HTMLTableSectionElement")}}` 

Specifications

{{Specifications}} 

Browser compatibility

{{Compat}} 

See also

In this article

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