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Asked: 2026-06-12T15:19:21+00:00

I’ve read conflicting webpages about using HTML 5’s section element. Is it semantically appropriate

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I’ve read conflicting webpages about using HTML 5’s section element. Is it semantically appropriate to use it as the section between my header and footer?

<body>
  <header>logo, nav links</header>
  <section>main content of my webpage</section>
  <footer>copyright, more links, contact info</footer>
</body>
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    A good place to start is Bruce Lawson’s Scooby Doo and the proposed HTML5 <content> element .

    You’ll find a link in there to the opinion of Ian (Hixie) Hickson who is the editor of the WHATWG version of HTML5 (aka HTML Living Standard) and until recently editor of the W3C version of the HTML5 standard.

    What he says (and has consistently said for at least the last 5 years) is that there is no need for a sectioning element there. If you need a containing element for everything that is not in the header or footer <div> is the element to use.

    On the other hand, another member of the W3C HTML working group, Steve Faulkner, has proposed the <maincontent> element for your use case, on the grounds that is allows the ARIA “main” role to be incorporated into native HTML.

    FWIW, for me, it seems odd that you should have a special element for between the header and footer in <body> but not for between header and footer in <section> or <article> so I’m with Hixie on this.

    I also don’t buy Steve’s comments that it will be useful in that it will mark the main content even if the other sectioning and header/footer elements are not marked up correctly, since there doesn’t seem any case in which I could advocate its use. It seems to be only for the web author who wants to do a half-assed job.

    Do note that if <maincontent> does get accepted, it will not be part of HTML5. The earliest it could appear would be HTML 5.1

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