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i – text in an alternate voice

<i>…</i>

Text in a different voice or mood from its surroundings: a foreign word or phrase (with the lang attribute), a technical or Latin name, the name of a ship, a character’s thoughts in a story. The browser displays it in italics.

Default display: display: inline
End tag: required
Content: phrasing content
Where it can be used: anywhere phrasing content is allowed
DOM interface: HTMLElement

Attributes

Only global attributes – lang for foreign words.

Examples

A Latin name and a foreign word with its language:

<p>The yeast <i lang="la">Saccharomyces cerevisiae</i> gives bread its flavour; the French call a starter <i lang="fr">levain</i>.</p>

result

The yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae gives bread its flavour; the French call a starter levain.

Accessibility

The lang attribute on a foreign word tells the screen reader to read it with the right pronunciation.

Things to watch out for

Stress emphasis is em, the title of a work (a book, a film) cite, a term at its definition dfn.
Font icons written as <i class="icon"></i> are a misuse of the element. Cleaner is a span with aria-hidden="true" and text for screen readers next to the icon.

Browser support

Baseline – widely available: works in all major browsers and has for a long time (since 2015 at the latest). Since version: Chrome 1, Firefox 1, Safari 1. As of October 2026 (MDN browser-compat-data).