What is an HTML Element?

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

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

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

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

Below is a visualization of an HTML page structure:

HTML Elements

<tagname>Content goes here...</tagname>
<h1>My First Heading</h1>
<p>My first paragraph.</p>
<p>This is a <br> paragraph with a line break.</p>

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<body>

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

</body>
</html>

The <!DOCTYPE> Declaration

The <!DOCTYPE> declaration represents the document type, and helps browsers to display web pages correctly.

It must only appear once, at the top of the page (before any HTML tags).

The <!DOCTYPE> declaration is not case-sensitive.

The <!DOCTYPE> declaration for HTML5 is:

<!DOCTYPE html>

HTML Headings

<h1>Heading 1</h1>
<h2>Heading 2</h2>
<h3>Heading 3</h3>
<h4>Heading 4</h4>
<h5>Heading 5</h5>
<h6>Heading 6</h6>

HTML Paragraphs

<p>This is a paragraph.</p>

Last updated 3 years ago