1. What are HTML Elements?

HTML elements are the code blocks that combine to form the structure of a web page. Usually, the nesting of HTML5 elements is the primary way to write HTML markup. Moreover, an HTML element makes a separate code block and can work separately. However, certain HTML tags do not allow nesting and are called empty elements or singleton tags. <p>Some Text</p> is an example of an HTML element. Usually, HTML5 elements have the following components:

1.1. Structure or Syntax of HTML5 Elements

  • An opening tag or starting tag of the element.
  • The closing tag or ending tag of the element.
  • Also, the content of the element.
  • Further, HTML Element attributes that are suitable and allowed for the element (if required).
  • Moreover, the structure of singleton HTML5 elements is slightly different and have only the starting tag only.

Tutorial Contents:

  1. Intro to an HTML Element
  2. How to Properly Nest HTML Markup?
  3. Detailed Example of HTML5 Elements
  4. What are Singleton Tags?
  5. Important and Widely Used Tags
  6. Conclusion

Example


<tagname>The content of the element..... </tagname>

Note:

An HTML element can have several children as described below: The HTML Tags, content, and attributes are known as children of HTML elements.

The following example illustrates the sub-component or children of an HTML5 element.

Example

<h1>Heading level 1 of the element..... </h1>
<h2>Heading level 2 of the element..... </h2>
<p>Paragraph of the element..... </p>
<span>The content of the element..... </span>

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2. What is the Nesting of HTML Elements?

  • Importantly, HTML markup also permit the nesting of elements into each other.
  • Resultantly, this adds additional functionality to HTML markup.
  • It is also obvious from the above HTML example.
  • The above instance denotes that the HTML markup always comes nested.
  • Usually, an HTML web page contains many HTML elements nested and it is impossible to create any web page without the nesting of elements.

3. Detailed Example of HTML Elements

Example

<!Doctype HTML>
<html>
	<head>
		<title>Tuts Insider</title>
	</head>
	<!--The Content after this tag is visible-->
	<body>
		<!-- This is a heading-->
		<h2>HTML elements</h2>
		<!-- This is a paragraph-->
		<p>This page contains HTML introductory information.</p>
	</body>
</html>

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3.1. Explanation

<!Doctype > It tells the browser about the version of HTML
<html> <html> is the opening tag of any HTML document. It is the parent element of all the markup.
<head> This element contains meta-data about the document. Meta-data is the information of the document information. e.g title, subject, location, etc
<title> The title of the document is defined by this element.
</title> It is the closing tag of the title element.
</head> </head> is the closing tag of head element.
<body> The body element, all visible content is contained in this element.
<h2> It is the heading of the document. It is the second most bigger heading.
</h2> The closing tag of the h2 heading.
<p> The paragraph element defines paragraphs in a document.
</p> The closing tag of paragraph.
</body> Closing tag of body element.
</html> And finally, the /html tag tells the end of the document.

3.2. The "<html>" element contains:

  • <html> is the main building block or parent element of any HTML document.
  • It comes with an opening tag and a closing tag.
  • All other elements are nested within this element except <!DOCTYPE HTML>.
  • Further, </html> is the closing HTML tag.
  • The two main or child elements of <html> are <head>...</head> and <body>...</body> elements.

3.3. The "<head>" element contains:

  • <title>Title of the document</title>, which is shown in the browser tab
  • Also, it may contain external stylesheets
  • Further, it may have on-page stylesheets
  • It may also contain external scrips linked
  • Moreover, it may have on-page scripts

3.4. The "<body>" element contains:

  • All the visible content on the web page appears in this element
  • Also, all headings, paragraphs, HTML forms, HTML buttons, HTML tables, etc lie in the body element
  • Moreover, on-Page scripts may also come in this element, etc.
  • Links to external scripts may also lie in this element, at the bottom

Note:

There are two types of elements depending on the display:
  1. Block-level elements e.g. HTML paragraph element <p>
  2. Inline elements e.g. HTML span element <span>

4. Empty HTML Elements or Singleton Tags

  • Typically, depending on the type of tag, we write the HTML markup with elements containing pair of tags.
  • This pair includes starting and ending tags and may contain attributes also.
  • However, certain HTML5 elements do not have their closing tag and they terminate within the starting portion of the tag.
  • These tags have various names such as void, empty, or singleton HTML5 tags or elements.
  • Also, they do not have any content because they do not possess the final tag.
  • Moreover, the data of the void elements are enclosed within the starting tag as a link, resource, or any other attribute.

5. Important HTML5 Elements

Certain HTML elements are important and necessary to display a web page correctly. In addition, various HTML5 elements play a vital role and are extensively utilized in developing web documents. The table below contains all the key HTML5 elements.

5.1. XMTML Required Elements

The below HTML5 elements are a must to meet XHTML standards.

XHTML Requirements
Element Description
<!Doctype> This tag sets the doctype of a web page and it varies according to the version of HTML.
<html> The parent HTML elment in any web document.
<head> It contains head elements including scripts, styles, titles, etc.
<title> This HTML tag sets the title of a web page.
<body> All visible components of a web page go inside this element.

5.2. Most Used HTML Elements

The following table contains the HTML elements that are excessively employed in web pages and hence they are key components of web documents.

Widely Used Tags
Element Description
<p> The paragraph element is required on almost every web page.
<h1>...<h6> HTML headings are also very important to divide the text into different sub-sections into web pages.
<a> To include hyperlinks, this tag is very useful and hence widely used on web pages.
<img> We insert images in documents by employing this singleton HTML5 element.
<link> This is another tag from the family of empty HTML elements to include external stylesheets in our document.
<script> We include an external script by employing this HTML5 element.
<ul> This element is utilized to insert an unordered list in a document.
<ol> To include ordered HTML list, we use this element.
<table> To organize tabular data, we can create tables with the help of this element.
<form> This element is helpful to define forms and hold different input fields.

6. Conclusion

In conclusion, an HTML element contains a starting and ending tag and many of them allow nesting. Also, the nesting of markup is the core capability of HTML code to achieve the desired outcomes. Moreover, any browser will always display some rendered result on the screen whether there is a closing tag or not. It will produce the results based on the initial tag. But, if a developer forgets to enter the closing tag, then the results, rendered by the browser, might not be useful, distorted, incomplete, or different from the desired ones.

Note:

Never truncate the closing tag of an HTML element. Although, exceptions may occur like in empty elements i.e. <hr />, <br />, etc
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