There are two different kinds of HTML elements, the most common one is a open/close element, which looks like this:
We write our content between two HTML tags (an opening and a closing tag), which are identified by a tag name, eg. element
, wrapped in <
and >
angle brackets (you might know them as the greater than and less than symbols or chevrons).
There’s one difference between the opening and closing tags, as the closing tag has a forward slash (/
) before the tag name, to let the browser know that it’s a closing tag, and our content is finished.
The other kind of HTML element is a self-closing element, which doesn’t require a closing tag, but instead has a forward slash (/
) before the second chevron.
We’ll look at self-closing elements a bit more later, and how we can give them content without putting it between two HTML tags.