Recommended tags for documentation comments (C# programming guide)

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The C# compiler processes documentation comments in your code and formats them as XML in a file whose name you specify in the /doc command-line option. To create the final documentation based on the compiler-generated file, you can create a custom tool, or use a tool such as DocFX or Sandcastle.

Tags are processed on code constructs such as types and type members.

Note

Documentation comments cannot be applied to a namespace.

The compiler will process any tag that is valid XML. The following tags provide generally used functionality in user documentation.

Tags
<c> <para> <see>* <value>
<code> <param>* <seealso>*
<example> <paramref> <summary>
<exception>* <permission>* <typeparam>*
<include>* <remarks> <typeparamref>
<list> <inheritdoc> <returns>

(* denotes that the compiler verifies syntax.)

If you want angle brackets to appear in the text of a documentation comment, use the HTML encoding of < and > which is &lt; and &gt; respectively. This encoding is shown in the following example.

/// <summary>
/// This property always returns a value &lt; 1.
/// </summary>

See also