<DEL> | NN 6 IE 4 HTML 4
<DEL>...</DEL> | HTML End Tag: Required
The del element and its companion, ins, define a format that shows which segments of a document's content have been marked up for deletion (or insertion) during the authoring process. This is far from a workflow management scheme, but in the hands of a supporting WYSIWYG HTML authoring tool, these elements can assist in controlling generational changes of a document in process. Text contained by this element is rendered as a strikethrough style (whereas ins elements are underlined). The HTML 4 specification includes two potentially useful attributes for preserving hidden information about the date and time of the alteration and some descriptive text about the change.
Example
    <P>Four score and
    <DEL cite="Fixed the math">eight</DEL><INS>seven</INS> years ago...</P>
Object Model Reference
    [window.]document.getElementById(elementID)
Element-Specific Attributes
cite | datetime
Element-Specific Event Handler Attributes
None.

cite | NN 6 IE 6 HTML 4
cite="text" | Optional
A description of the reason for the change or other notation to be associated with the element, but normally hidden from view. In Netscape 6, the context menu for such an element contains a Properties choice, which leads to a displayed list of attributes and their values for the visitor. Or, your DHTML scripts can access the information through the element object's cite property, and add value to the presentation.
Example
    <DEL cite="Fixed the math --A.L.">eight</DEL>
Value
Any string of characters. The string must be inside a matching pair of (single or double) quotation marks.
Default
None.
Object Model Reference
    [window.]document.getElementById(elementID).cite

datetime | NN 6 IE 6 HTML 4
datetime="datetimeString" | Optional
The date and time the deletion was made. This information is most likely to be inserted into a document with an HTML authoring tool designed to track content insertions and deletions. Data from this attribute can be recalled later as an audit trail to changes of the document. There can be only one datetime attribute value associated with a given del element. In Netscape 6, the context menu for such an element contains a Properties choice, which leads to a displayed list of attributes and their values for the visitor. Or, your DHTML scripts can access the information through the element object's dateTime property, and add value to the presentation.
Example
    <DEL datetime="2001-09-11T08:56:00-04:00">SomeDeleteTextHere</DEL>
Value
The datetime attribute requires a value in a special date-time format that conveys information about the date and time in such a way that the exact moment can be deduced from any time zone around the world. Syntax for the format is as follows: yyyy-MM-dd T hh:mm:ssTZD. There are two formats for the Time Zone Designator. The first is simply the uppercase letter "Z", which stands for UTC (Coordinated Universal Timealso called "Zulu"). The other format indicates the offset from UTC that the time shown in hh:mm:ss represents. This time offset consists of a plus or minus symbol and another pair of hh:mm values. For time zones west of Greenwich Mean Time (which, for all practical purposes is the same as UTC), the operator is a negative sign because the main hh:mm:ss time is earlier than UTC; for time zones east of GMT, the offset is a positive value. For example, Pacific Standard Time is eight hours earlier than UTC: when it is 6:00 P.M. in the PST zone, it is 2:00 A.M. the next morning at UTC. Thus, the following examples all represent the exact same moment in time (Time Zone Designator shown in boldface for clarification only): For more details about this way of representing time, see the ISO-8601 standard.
Default
None.

lang | NN 3 IE 4 HTML 4
lang="languageCode" | Optional
The language being used for the element's attribute values and content. A browser can use this information to assist in proper rendering of content with respect to details such as treatment of ligatures (when supported by a particular font or required by a written language), quotation marks, and hyphenation. Other applications and search engines might use this information to aid the selection of spell-checking dictionaries and the creation of indices.
Example
    <SPAN lang="de">Deutsche Bundesbahn</SPAN>
Value
Case-insensitive language code.
Default
Browser default.
Object Model Reference
    [window.]document.getElementById(elementID).lang

title | NN 6 IE 3 HTML 3.2
title="advisoryText" | Optional
An advisory description of the element. For HTML elements that produce visible content on the page, IE 4 and later and Netscape 6 render the content of the title attribute as a tooltip when the cursor rests on the element for a moment. For example, the table-related col element does not display content, so its title attribute is merely advisory. To generate tooltips in tables, assign title attributes to elements such as table, tr, th, or td. The font and color properties of the tooltip are governed by the browser, and are not modifiable under script control. In IE/Windows, the tooltip is the standard small, light-yellow rectangle; in IE/Mac, the tooltip displays as a cartoon bubble in the manner of the Mac OS bubble help system. Netscape 6 tooltips are the same small rectangle on all OS versions. If no attribute is specified, the tooltip does not display. You can assign any descriptive text you like to this attribute. Not everyone will see it, however, so do not put mission-critical information here. Browsers designed to meet web accessibility criteria might use this attribute's information to read information about a link or nontext elements to vision-impaired web surfers. Therefore, don't ignore this potentially helpful aid to describing an element's purpose on the page. Although the compatibility listing for this attribute dates the attribute back to Internet Explorer 3 and HTML 3.2, it is newly ascribed to many elements starting with IE 4 and HTML 4.0.
Example
    <SPAN title="United States of America">U.S.A.</SPAN>
Value
Any string of characters. The string must be inside a matching pair of (single or double) quotation marks.
Default
None.
Object Model Reference
    [window.]document.getElementById(elementID).title