An attribute, simply put, is a quality or characteristic of an element. Most HTML attributes are now deprecated due to the acceptance of cascading style sheets. A few years ago when examining HTML source code it would be common to see attributes such as font face="arial", align="center", and who can forget the classic <MARQUEE BGCOLOR="aqua">scrolling text goes here</MARQUEE>. In these examples "font face", "align", and "bgcolor" are attributes. This type of presentational HTML markup is now frowned upon in the web design community. It is considered much more appropriate to add presentational style through CSS.