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HTML Introduction to HTML and CSS (2016) HTML: The Structural Foundation of Web Pages and Applications The Basic Structure of a Web Page

Posted by Hanna Han
Hanna Han
4,105 Points

HTML elements vs. HTML tags

Hi, I wonder what is different between HTML elements and HTML tags as terms?

2 Answers

trio-group I.AM
trio-group I.AM
25,711 Points

Hey!

Designers and developers use these terms interchangeably and you will hear them very often. The only difference between the two is that 'HTML element' mostly refers to a building block of a page (could be anything, e.g. columns, sections, buttons, links, etc.) and 'HTML tag' can refer to all those things but also to "empty" elements like the <br> tag for example. Such tags are not necessarily building blocks but they do have their purpose and function on a web page.

It would be great to hear the opinions of other developers on this one. Maybe others don't see any differences between the two terms and use them as total synonyms.

Emil Pesaxov
Emil Pesaxov
3,684 Points
Emil Pesaxov
Emil Pesaxov
3,684 Points

Hello,

At the begining, this question occured to me as well. So it is a perfectly normal and natural question to arise for every starting web developer. The difference between HTML tags and HTML elements is as follows:

Take for example the following code: <p>Hello World</p> The opening p is a tag as well as the closing p. They are refered to as opening tag and closing tag, respectively.

An element is the combination of the opening tag, closing tag and any content that is between the two.

As trio interactive mentioned before, there are empty elements as well. Which is a term given to tags that have no closing tag, such as <br>, <hr>, <link>, <input>, <img> etc.