Best html5 element to use for presenting 'metadata' about an item

Question

I'm building a catalogue of books and scientific journals. Each book or journal will have an page in which various details about the item will be shown.

What would be the best html5 element to use for some of the item metadata - eg number of pages, author, etc?

Should I just be using <div> or <span> - I can't see a semantic element that is particularly suitable.

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 18 '13 at 09:33

1

you can use any html element and add microdata http://microformats.org/wiki/html5

values for books can be found here http://schema.org/Book

answered Jun 18 '13 at 09:33

kevinq

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1
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you can test your microdata here http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets – kevinq Jun 18 '13 at 09:43

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 21 '13 at 12:50

For name-value groups there is the dl element:

Name-value groups may be terms and definitions, metadata topics and values, questions and answers, or any other groups of name-value data.

Example:

<dl>
  <dt>Number of pages</dt>
  <dd>120</dd>
  <dt>Author</dt>
  <dd>John Doe</dd>
</dl>

Best html5 element to use for presenting 'metadata' about an item

2 Answers2