An HTML element is defined by a start tag, some content, and an end tag
The HTML element is everything from the start tag to the end tag:
</tagname>Content goes here...</tagname>
Examples of some HTML elements:
<h1>My First Heading</h1>
<p>My First paragraph</p>
| Start tag | Element content | End tag |
|---|---|---|
| <h1> | My First Heading | </h1> |
| <p> | My first paragraph. | </p> |
| <br> | none | <none> |
HTML elements can be nested (this means that elements can contain other elements).
All HTML documents consist of nested HTML elements.
The following example contains four HTML elements (<html>,<body>, <h1> and <p>):
The <html> element is the root element and it defines the whole HTML document.
It has a start tag <html> and an end tag </html> .
Then, inside the <html> element there is a <body> element:
The <body> element defines the document's body.
It has a start tag <body> and an end tag </body>.
Then, inside the <body> element there are two other elements: <h1> and <p>:
The <h1> element defines a heading.
It has a start tag <h1> and an end tag </h1> :
The <p> element defines a paragraph.
It has a start tag <p> and an end tag </p>:
Some HTML elements will display correctly, even if you forget the end tag:
However, never rely on this! Unexpected results and errors may occur if you forget the end tag!
HTML elements with no content are called empty elements.
The <br> tag defines a line break, and is an empty element without a closing tag:
HTML tags are not case sensitive: <p> means the same as <p>.