documenting div sections, use title attribute?

Question

I'm looking for the most terse way to document sections of my page, e.g. div sections.

Anything wrong with using the title attribute, e.g.

<div title="Payment Area" class="form">
   ...
</div>

?

P.S. In case relevant, I'm using the IntelliJ IDE, but new to its various capabilities, e.g. automatic formatting control and other ways to be able to easily understand sections of my pages.

Answer 1

If an element has a title attribute, most browsers show a tooltip with the attribute’s value when you hover over it. In this case, they’ll show a “Payment Area” tooltip when you hover anywhere over that div.

HTML attributes, in general, have a purpose. HTML has comments for documentation! Try them:

<div class="form"> <!-- Payment Area -->
    ...
</div>

You mentioned that you didn't want the overhead of comments. If you count up the characters (including the required space before the attribute, they're actually the same length:

 title="Payment Area"
<!-- Payment Area -->

(But, I agree, they do look bigger!)