Web Design in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

Anonymous table elements

Because other languages may not have all the elements necessary to make up the table layout model used by CSS, missing elements are assumed for the layout to work. According to the CSS 2.1 specification, a table element will automatically generate necessary anonymous table objects (a table, row, or cell) around itself.

Anonymous table objects are a function of the user agent’s rendering engine—no code is changed. To use the earlier example and its table display values, if the row-equivalent element is missing, the browser generates an anonymous table-row object between the cells and the table level.

    <platter>[begin anonymous table-row object]
      <name>Brie</name>
      <origin>France</origin>
    [end anonymous table-row object]
    </platter>

For a more detailed explanation of how anonymous table elements function, see the CSS 2.1 specification online at http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/tables.html.