The address element

Did you know there’s an address element? Well, brace yourself, because there is! But its use has been a source of confusion until recently.

In the past, the address element was strictly used for content author info, something it’s still useful for:

<article>
  <!-- article content -->
  <footer>
    <p>Like my stuff? As the kids say, drop me a line via electronic mail:</p>
    <address>
      <a href="mailto:rick.cooldood78@example.com">Ricky Cooldood 😎</a>
    </address>
  </footer>
</article>

Note that this example has the address element nested within a sectioning element, in this case, an article. This is what associates the contact information with the content. If you wanted to associate it with the entire site, you would drop it into the site’s main footer.

Of course, you would think that you could use an address element for addresses as well, but that has not always been the case. Thankfully, a recent change in spec allows for the one thing you would think it could be used for:

<address>
  Richard Cooldood<br>
  1234 No Way Yes Way<br>
  Awesome, USA 77777
</address>

This makes me incredibly happy. Probably too happy.

Anyway, if you need more granular semantics around an address, you can use a structured data format like Microdata or RDFa.

If you’d like to hear more about structured data, let me know, and while you’re at it, hit the follow button, because I’m going to keep writing stuff and you might as well read it, right?