An element is a part of a webpage. In XML and HTML, an element may contain a data item or a chunk of text or an image, or perhaps nothing. A typical element includes an opening tag with some attributes, enclosed text content, and a closing tag.

Example: in <p class="nice">Hello world!</p>, '<p class="nice">' is an opening tag, 'class="nice"' is an attribute and its value, 'Hello world!' is enclosed text content, and '</p>' is a closing tag.

Elements and tags are not the same things. Tags begin or end an element in source code, whereas elements are part of the DOM, the document model for displaying the page in the browser.

See also