Try it yourself
One attribute tells browsers, screen readers and translation tools what language a page is written in. Four attempts at it.
Which one is correct?
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Nothing declared. A screen reader falls back to whatever voice it is set to, which is how an English page ends up read aloud in a French accent — technically audible, genuinely unpleasant.
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Close enough to look fine and wrong enough to be ignored. The attribute takes a language code, not a language name — "en", not "english".
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This is the one. A valid code, with an optional region that helps tools pick British spellings and voices. Plain "en" is also perfectly valid if you would rather not commit to a region.
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Another tag that looks official and is read by nothing. The language belongs on the html element, not in a meta tag.
Pick a line. Every one of them has an answer.
Show me the answer
<html lang="en-GB">
This is the one. A valid code, with an optional region that helps tools pick British spellings and voices. Plain "en" is also perfectly valid if you would rather not commit to a region.
The written version
Telling browsers which language the page is in →
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