<small>
Fine print: disclaimers, legal notices, copyright, and short side notes.
- Display
- inline
- Closing tag
- Required
- Permitted content
- Phrasing content
Example
#<p>
Premium access for a year: <strong>$299</strong><br>
<small>Price includes tax. You can cancel your subscription anytime.</small>
</p>
<footer>
<small>© 2026 CodeWorlds. All rights reserved.</small>
</footer>Definition and usage
#The <small> element marks fine print, meaning side notes: legal disclaimers, copyright information, the terms of a promotion, or a license. Browsers display it in a smaller font.
What matters is the meaning, not the size. If text just needs to be smaller for visual reasons, set font-size in CSS. <small> also doesn’t take away the importance of text marked inside it with <strong> or <em>.
Use it for short phrases. Don’t wrap long legal texts, such as an entire terms-of-service document, in <small>; put them in ordinary paragraphs instead.
Syntax
#<small>fine print</small>Attributes
#This element has no attributes of its own. It supports the global attributes, such as class, id and hidden.
Default CSS
#Most browsers display this element with these default styles:
small {
font-size: smaller;
}Browser support
#Widely available
Works in all modern browsers, phones included. You can use it without worry.
- Chrome
- Edge
- Firefox
- Safari
Good practices
#- Don’t shrink text with
<small>just for looks. That’s what CSS is for. - Fine print still has to be legible. Text that’s too small is a problem for many people, not just those with low vision.
- Copyright information in a footer is often written inside
<small>for exactly this reason.
Related entries
#- <strong>Text of great importance: a warning, key information.
- <b>Draws attention to a piece of text without giving it any extra weight, e.g. keywords.
- <footer>A page or section’s footer: author, copyright, links, contact info.
- <sub>Subscript: text lowered and shrunk, for example in chemical formulas.
- <sup>Superscript: text raised and shrunk, for example exponents and footnote numbers.
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