<body>

<body> contains the document’s flow content: text, headings, landmarks, links, controls, and media. It follows head inside html. Use one body per document.

A complete document

<main>
  <h1>Gardening notes</h1>
  <p>Keep seedlings watered while their roots establish.</p>
</main>

Placement and attributes

Use main for the primary content and semantic elements inside it. A body is not a substitute for a main landmark. Global attributes apply; document-level event handler attributes also exist, but a separate script is easier to maintain.

Old presentational attributes such as bgcolor and text are obsolete. Use background-color and color in CSS instead.

Inspect the result

Inspect the document’s accessibility tree. Find the main landmark, the level-1 heading, and the paragraph. Confirm that the metadata title is separate from the visible body heading.

Common mistakes

Do not insert a second document root, head, or body into an existing article and expect it to create a nested document. Use an iframe when a demonstration needs its own document. Browsers repair malformed HTML; the repaired DOM can differ from the source you typed.

Sources and browser support

MDN: body describes the syntax and links to the specification and compatibility data. Check individual values in that table when supporting older browsers.