How is an object nested inside another microdata item?

Definition: Put itemprop and itemscope on the same nested HTML element. The element becomes a property of the enclosing item, while itemscope makes the property value a new item with its own properties.

Key facts

• The WHATWG Microdata specification uses itemscope to create an item and itemprop to add a property to an item.
• The same specification says that a property can itself be a group of name-value pairs when itemscope is placed on the element that declares the property.
• Schema.org's Getting Started guide describes an embedded item as the value of an item property and places a new itemscope immediately after the corresponding itemprop.
• An itemtype on the nested element supplies the vocabulary type for that inner item. The HTML specification defines item types as URLs.
• Properties inside the nested scope describe the inner item. The HTML specification's property algorithm traverses child elements while the current element has no itemscope.

How do itemprop and itemscope combine?

itemprop gives the relationship a name in the enclosing item. itemscope creates a new item at that same element. Adding itemtype there identifies the vocabulary type of the new item. This is the standard pattern for representing a structured property such as a movie's director as a person with properties of their own.

<div itemscope itemtype="https://schema.org/Movie">
  <h1 itemprop="name">Avatar</h1>
  <div itemprop="director" itemscope itemtype="https://schema.org/Person">
    Director: <span itemprop="name">James Cameron</span>
  </div>
</div>

Schema.org uses this pattern in its embedded-items example. The outer Movie item has a director property. The value of that property is the inner Person item, whose name property is James Cameron. The guide also explains that span elements can attach itemprop to text without changing how a browser renders the page.

Which item receives each property?

The outer element is the root of the outer item. Its direct property elements, such as h1 itemprop="name", contribute values to that item. The nested div contributes the director property to the outer item and starts a separate item at the same time.

The inner span itemprop="name" belongs to the Person item because it is inside the nested item scope. It does not become another name property of the Movie item. The WHATWG algorithm adds child elements to its traversal while the current element has no itemscope; an element that has itemscope forms the boundary of the current item's descendants. The specification calls an item whose element has no itemprop a top-level microdata item, so the outer div in the example is top-level.

A nested item can have several properties with the same name. The specification preserves the order of values that share a property name, while properties with different names are unordered relative to one another.

When should the nested element carry a type?

Use itemtype on the element that carries itemscope when the vocabulary defines a type for the inner item. The HTML specification requires an itemtype value to contain absolute URL tokens from the same vocabulary. Schema.org supplies types such as Movie and Person as URLs, which is why the example places https://schema.org/Person on the nested element.

Schema.org's guide says that many properties have expected types, so a property value can be an embedded item. It also says that embedding is optional for those properties: a regular text value or a URL can be used. The choice therefore depends on whether the page needs to describe the property's value as its own item with its own properties.

If a property element cannot be placed inside the item, the HTML syntax provides itemref. Its value is a list of element IDs, and the specification adds those referenced elements to the crawl used to find the item's properties.

Related terms

• Microdata
• Structured data
• JSON-LD
• RDFa

FAQ

Can an element have itemprop without itemscope?

Yes. itemprop alone adds a property to an enclosing item. The property's value is generally the element's text. The HTML specification also defines URL values from a and img, and date or time values from time.

Does the nested item need an itemtype?

No. The HTML specification says an element with itemscope may have itemtype. Adding the type gives the inner item a vocabulary context and lets the vocabulary define the meaning of its property names.

Can the inner item's properties be outside its HTML element?

Yes. Add itemref to the item element and give it the IDs of the elements containing the additional properties.

Sources

1. WHATWG, "HTML Standard: Microdata", 16 October 2026
2. Schema.org, "Getting Started", 16 September 2026

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