div (HTML attribute)

Description

The div is a generic block-level element. It doesn’t convey any meaning about its contents (unlike a p element that signifies a paragraph, or an h1 or h2 element that would indicate a level 1 or level 2 heading, respectively); as such, it’s easy to customize it to your needs. The div element is currently the most common method for identifying the structural sections of a document and for laying out a web page using CSS.

Some developers perceive similarities between the p and the div elements, seeing them as being interchangeable, but this isn’t the case. The p element offers more semantic information (“this is a paragraph of text, a small collection of thoughts that are grouped together; the next paragraph outlines some different thoughts”), while the
div element can be used to group almost any elements together. Indeed, it can contain almost any other element, unlike p, which can only contain inline elements.

Example

The HTML below shows two divs being used in conjunction with id attributes to identify different sections of a web page:

<div id="main_navigation">
⋮
</div>
<div id="body_content">
  <h1>Page heading</h1>
  <p>Body content</p>
</div>

Use This For …

The div is an “anything-goes” element—it can contain any inline or block-level
elements you choose, so it has no typical content.

Meet the author

Adam Roberts

Adam is SitePoint's head of newsletters, who mainly writes Versioning, a daily newsletter covering everything new and interesting in the world of web development. He has a beard and will talk to you about beer and Star Wars, if you let him.