Semantic markup for self-reference?

Question

We include a reference text for our content which is included at the top of pages when users print out the content.

In HTML4 and XHTML1.1, this was marked up as:

<div id="reference">
  Our product name. Our organisation; 2013 June. Available from: https://oursite.com
</div>

We are rewriting our templates as HTML5, and I was wondering if I should be using <cite> instead?

Answer 1

The cite element is not appropriate here. You may only use it for "the title of a work" that is "being quoted", "referenced in detail" or "mentioned in passing". But you are giving information about the very same page, not some other work.

I think you may use the footer element:

A footer typically contains information about its section such as who wrote it, links to related documents, copyright data, and the like.

But instead of footer, the header element may also be appropriate here:

A header typically contains a group of introductory or navigational aids.

It might help to see the whole page structure, but taking your specific example into account, I’d probably go with header.

If the information only applies to the main content (and not the whole page content), make sure to include the footer/header in the sectioning element (article/section) for the main content. If the information is about the whole page, include the footer/header as child of body (with no other sectioning element as parent).