Types of element[edit]

There are three kinds of HTML elements: normal elements, raw text elements, and void
elements.
Normal elements usually have both a start tag and an end tag, although for some elements the
end tag, or both tags, can be omitted. It is constructed in a similar way:

 a start tag ( <tag> ) marking the beginning of an element, which may incorporate any
number of HTML attributes;
 some amount of content, including text and other elements;
 an end tag, in which the element name is prefixed with a slash:  </tag> .
Raw text elements (also known as text or text-only elements) are constructed with:

 a start tag (in the form  <tag> ) marking the beginning of an element, which may
incorporate any number of HTML attributes;
 some amount of text content, but no elements (all tags, apart from the applicable end
tag, will be interpreted as content);
 an end tag, in which the element name is prefixed with a slash:  </tag> . In some
versions of HTML, the end tag is optional for some elements. The end tag is required
in XHTML.
An example is the  <title>  element, which must not contain other elements (including markup
of text), only plain text.
Void elements (also sometimes called empty elements, single elements or stand-alone
elements) only have a start tag (in the form  <tag> ), which contains any HTML attributes. They
may not contain any children, such as text or other elements. For compatibility with XHTML, the
HTML specification[which?] allows an optional space and slash[citation needed] ( <tag />  is permissible).
The slash is required in XHTML and other XML applications. Two common void elements
are  <br />  (for a hard line-break, such as in a poem or an address) and  <hr />  (for a
thematic break). Other such elements are often place-holders which reference external files,
such as the image ( <img /> ) element. The attributes included in the element will then point to
the external file in question. Another example of a void element is  <link /> , for which the
syntax is:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="fancy.css" type="text/css">

This  <link />  element points the browser at a style sheet to use when presenting the HTML
document to the user. Note that in the HTML syntax attributes don't have to be quoted if they are
composed only of certain characters: letters, digits, the hyphen-minus and the period. When
using the XML syntax (XHTML), on the other hand, all attributes must be quoted, and a spaced
trailing slash is required before the last angle bracket:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="fancy.css" type="text/css" />