The Address Tag

Trying to be a professional web designer we try to learn everything necessary about web standards and even more. Now you know a lot about screen readers and people with disabilities browsing the web, how machines differ from humans as well as about semantics and syntax. All this is quite useful. However, sometimes it is also required to forget about standards and create something new in your code.

Perhaps, you have already visited w3schools and check up on the available xhtml tags. Here is the actual definition of the address tag according to w3c site:

The address element may be used by authors to supply contact information for a document or a major part of a document such as a form. This element often appears at the beginning or end of a document.

Seems to be confusing? Well, the purpose of the address tag is to provide a means of contact for a specific piece of information on the document. However, the definition is quite vague and you can suggest that it can be used for any address stated within a document. Thus, w3schools give an explanation:

Note: The address tag should NOT be used as describing a postal address, unless it is a part of the contact information.

Thus, the address tag is intended for visitors willing to contact the author of the web document. However, you can see an address tag and expect that it is used for marking up an actual address, not for general contact information regarding the author of the document. This is quite possible… if you forget about standards:

<address>
<span class= “street”>…</span>
<span class=”city”>…</span>
<span class=”country”>…</span>
</address>

As you can see this article is quite ironical and of course, you should stick to the standards. But still sometimes it is rather interesting to be more creative and go against standards if it does no harm. This rule can be applied to web design as well as to life.

Reference: www.onderhond.com/blog/work/address-tag