index.md

---

title: <acronym>
slug: Web/HTML/Element/acronym
page-type: html-element
status:
  - deprecated
browser-compat: html.elements.acronym

---

{{HTMLSidebar}}{{deprecated_header}}

Summary

The <acronym> HTML element allows authors to clearly indicate a sequence of characters that compose an acronym or abbreviation for a word.

Warning: Don't use this element. Use the {{HTMLElement("abbr")}} element instead.

Attributes

This element only has global attributes, which are common to all elements.

DOM Interface

This element implements the {{domxref('HTMLElement')}} interface.

Example

<p>
  The <acronym title="World Wide Web">WWW</acronym> is only a component of the
  Internet.
</p>

Default styling

Though the purpose of this tag is purely for the convenience of the author, its default styling varies from one browser to another:

• Opera, Firefox, Chrome, and some others add a dotted underline to the content of the element.

• A few browsers not only add a dotted underline, but also put it in small caps; to avoid this styling, adding something like {{cssxref('font-variant')}}: none in the CSS takes care of this case.

It is therefore recommended that web authors either explicitly style this element, or accept some cross-browser variation.

Specifications

{{Specifications}}

Browser compatibility

{{Compat}}

See also

• The {{HTMLElement("abbr")}} HTML element