Labeling Input Fields
As noted earlier in the chapter, it's up to you as a form author to include prompting text in front of your form fields to suggest to a user how he or she should fill in the field. The XHTML <label> element formalizes the relationship between the prompting text (the label) and the form field it is paired with. <label> takes the for attribute, where for is set equal to the id attribute value of the associated form field. In the example
<label for="Zip">Enter your 9-digit ZIP code: </label> <input type="text" name="ZipCode" id="Zip" />
the prompting text "Enter your 9-digit ZIP code:" composes the label. Note how the label is associated with the subsequent field with the matching for and id attributes.
How a label is rendered ...
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