Are s allowed inside H1?

Question

I was wondering if there would be any problems if I added a list inside a H1 heading:

 

  
some link

        

Answer 1

Header elements like <h1> follow the phrasing content content model: if you wanted to follow the HTML specification to the letter, phrasing content can only contain regular text or other phrasing content. As <ul> elements aren't phrasing content, they're technically not allowed in <h1> elements.

Your second example—placing the <h1> elements within <li> elements—is valid markup and would be the preferred method of combining <h1> and <ul> elements.

Answer 2

You can use W3C Markup Validation Service to check out whether or not it is valid :)

Answer 3

To answer your original question, no, that doesn't look like a sane thing to do with your markup, and even if it were technically valid (which I don't believe it is) I wouldn't advise doing it.

As for SEO, h1 is used to some degree in search, though I believe it's not as important as the <title> element. However, if your page doesn't have a heading, semantically-speaking, I certainly wouldn't crowbar one in just to try and improve rankings. Put that "current page" text in the <title>, if appropriate, make the breadcrumb list a normal breadcrumb list, and don't bother with the h1 if you don't need it.

Answer 4

this would display - however I think it would be considered bad practice as a list is not a header. You'd be better off adding css styling so you could format you list to the desired size, font etc.

Answer 5

It's not valid to have a ul inside a h1, the best way of checking is to use http://validator.w3.org/ to check your structure, that way the doctype you are using will be considered. (but it's still not valid!)