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HTML Elements

An HTML element is defined by a start tag, some content, and an end tag.

HTML tags are like keywords which defines that how web browser will format and display the content. With the help of tags, a web browser can distinguish between an HTML content and a simple content.

When a web browser reads an HTML document, browser reads it from top to bottom and left to right. HTML tags are used to create HTML documents and render their properties. Each HTML tags have different properties.

An HTML file must have some essential tags so that web browser can differentiate between a simple text and HTML text. You can use as many tags you want as per your code requirement.

Syntax​

The HTML element is everything from the start tag to the end tag:

<tagname>Content goes here...</tagname>

Examples:

<h1>My Heading</h1>
<p>My paragraph.</p>
Start tagElement contentEnd tag
<h1>My First Heading</h1>
<p>My first paragraph.</p>
<br>nonenone
note

Some HTML elements have no content (like the <br> element). These elements are called empty elements. Empty elements do not have an end tag!

Nested HTML Elements​

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>):

Example​

<!DOCTYPE html>  
<html>  
	<body>   
		<h1>My First Heading</h1>  
		<p>My first paragraph.</p>  
	</body>  
</html>

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:

<body>  
	<h1>My First Heading</h1>  
	<p>My first paragraph.</p>  
</body>

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>:

<h1>My First Heading</h1>  
<p>My first paragraph.</p>

The <h1> element defines a heading.

It has a start tag <h1> and an end tag </h1>:

<h1>My First Heading</h1>

The <p> element defines a paragraph.

It has a start tag <p> and an end tag </p>:

<p>My first paragraph.</p>

Unclosed HTML Tags​

Some HTML elements will display correctly, even if you forget the end tag.

Example​

<html>  
	<body>  
		<p>This is a paragraph  
		<p>This is a paragraph  
	</body>  
</html>
caution

However, never rely on this!

Unexpected results and errors may occur if you forget the end tag!

Empty HTML Elements​

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:

Example​

<p>This is a <br> paragraph with a line break.</p>

Another example of empty tag is <hr>, that stands for Horizontal Rule. This tag is used to put a horizontal line across the webpage.

HTML is Not Case Sensitive​

HTML tags are not case sensitive: <P> means the same as <p>.

The HTML standard does not require lowercase tags, but W3C recommends lowercase in HTML, and demands lowercase for stricter document types like XHTML.

note

We will always use lowercase tag names.

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