Microdata extends HTML5 in a way that link and meta elements can be used in the body, if they contain an itemprop attribute.
If the
itempropattribute is present onlinkormeta, they are flow content and phrasing content. Thelinkandmetaelements may be used where phrasing content is expected if theitempropattribute is present.
This extension is currently also included in the HTML 5.1 Nightly (Editor’s Draft) (see link element and meta element). But as the Microdata specification became a W3C Note recently, we’ll have to see what happens with this reference.
RDFa 1.1 extends HTML5 in a way that link and meta elements can be used in the body, if they contain a propertỳ attribute.
If the
@propertyRDFa attribute is present on thelinkormetaelements, they MUST be viewed as conforming if used in thebodyof the document. More specifically, whenlinkormetaelements contain the RDFa@propertyattribute and are used in thebodyof an HTML5 document, they MUST be considered flow content.
So you are not allowed to use any link element (e.g., <link href="" rel="" />) in the body, but only those with an itemprop attribute (for Microdata) resp. a property attribute (for RDFa).
- with an
itempropattribute (for Microdata), or - with a
propertyattribute (for RDFa), or - with a
relvalue that is defined as "body-ok" (see zgreen’s answer).
Thus your link element can be used in the body:
<body>
<!-- … -->
<link itemprop="url" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Catcher_in_the_Rye" />
<!-- … -->
</body>