Template:Em

{{{1}}}

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This template is used in MediaWiki:Newpages-summary, and on approximately 1,430,000 pages, or roughly 2% of all pages.
Changes to it can cause immediate changes to the Wikipedia user interface.
To avoid major disruption and server load, any changes should be tested in the template's /sandbox or /testcases subpages, or in your own user subpage. The tested changes can be added to this page in a single edit. Please discuss changes on the talk page before implementing them.

Purpose

The Em template makes it faster and easier to apply the ... emphasis

semantic markup

, i.e. markup that conveys meaning or context, not just visual appearance.

Simple italicizing (''...'' or ...) is purely typographic and is semantically meaningless; however, there are some occasions when simple italics are preferable to the emphasis template, most often for titles of publications (books, films, albums, etc.), foreign words and phrases,

words as words (when quotation marks are not used for that purpose), names of ships, scientific names of genera and below

and other cases where stylistic conventions demand italics, but they convey no sense of emphasis.

The average reader, and average editor, do not and need not care about this distinction most of the time, but it can be important and editors who understand it can use this template as a baseline insurance against accidental or uninformed replacement by bots and human editors, as well as to add web accessibility.

Usage

{{em|text to be emphasized}}

or, if the text to be emphasized contains an equals sign:

{{em|1=text to be emphasized}}

These both render as:

text to be emphasized

This template puts intentional and explicit ... (emphasis) [X]HTML markup around the text provided as the first parameter. It is safest to always use the |1=.

Optional parameters

Advanced HTML values can be passed through the template to the HTML code:

|role= takes a WAI-ARIA role; adds role="rolename" to the HTML code
|class= takes a class name (or multiple class names, separated by spaces); adds class="classname[s]" to the HTML code
|style= takes inline CSS input; adds style="CSS directive[s]" to the HTML code
|id= takes a valid, unique HTML id (must begin with an alphabetic letter); adds id="name" to the HTML code
|title= takes text, which cannot be marked up in any way, and displays it as a pop-up "tooltip" (in most browsers) when the cursor hovers over the span

Use cases

This template is made to

semantically meaningful markup. With this technique, the emphasized text stands out from the rest of the nearby text in most if not all visual browsers and some text-to-speech screen readers (which usually ignore purely typographic italicization), without strongly affecting scannability

. It can also be parsed by user agents and other software as definitively indicating emphasis, not just some typographic italicized effect for appearance's sake. Therefore, it only should be used sparingly in articles to highlight something being stressed (e.g., to represent mild vocal emphasis). Example:

"Contrary to reports, she was {{em|not}} dead after all."
"Contrary to reports, she was not dead after all."

It is also occasionally used for disambiguation, e.g. between two adjacent but different uses of the same word or homonym ("What it is is a kind of custard."), but this usage is not often encyclopedic and can (when not found in a direct quotation) usually be rewritten to avoid the awkward construction.

When this template should not be used

Because {{em}} is strictly for semantic (meaningful) emphasis, it should not be used for layout, typography conventions (titles, foreign words, scientific names of genera and species, etc.), and other cases that are not true emphasis. In these different cases, italics Wikicode ''...'', which is rendered as ... for the browser or other user agent, should be used instead, or special markup for a particular case, such as {{var|...}} or <var>...</var> for variables in computer science and mathematics. {{Em}} should also not be used when the text to which it is applied is italicized for some other reason (e.g., it is part of a book title); in such cases use {{Strong}} instead. Usually avoid using {{em}} in non-quoted sentences that end in an exclamation point. And it is usually excessive to use {{em}} on terms that are Wikilinked, since the link markup acts as a form of emphasis itself.

"The New York Times is an American daily newspaper." This example should use ''The New York Times''.

TemplateData

This is the TemplateData for this template used by TemplateWizard, VisualEditor and other tools. See a monthly parameter usage report for Template:Em in articles based on its TemplateData.

TemplateData for Em

Formats text with the HTML emphasis () element. Do not use for layout, typography conventions (titles, foreign words, scientific names of genera and species, etc.), and other cases that are not true semantic (meaningful) emphasis; use normal ''italics'' formatting instead.

Template parameters[Edit template data]
This template prefers inline formatting of parameters.
Parameter		Description	Type	Status
Text	`1`	The text to format.	Content	required
WAI-ARIA role	`role`	The WAI-ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) role that the text plays. Adds the "role" attribute with the provided value to the HTML code. Suggested values `math` `presentation` `none` `note`	String	optional
HTML class(es)	`class`	Name(s) of the class(es), separated by spaces, to be added to the HTML "class" attribute.	String	optional
CSS formatting markup	`style`	CSS directives for formatting the text. Added to the HTML "style" attribute.	String	optional
HTML unique identifier	`id`	A unique HTML identifier, which must start with an alphabetic letter. Added to the "id" attribute.	String	optional
Tooltip text	`title`	Explanatory text of the pop-up tooltip to be displayed on hover. Added to the HTML "title" attribute.	String	optional

quote}} but without quote markup
{{kbd}}	`user input`	To indicate user input
{{key press}}	`Ctrl`+`x`	To indicate specific-keystroke input, including combinations
{{key top}}	`Left shift`	Similar; includes more symbols, but does not directly support combinations
{{button}}	`Don't save`	To indicate a button in a user interface
{{samp}}	`example output`	To indicate sample or example output