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2.1 Elements in HTML Documents
The interpreted instructions in HTML are called HTML
elements . Elements are denoted by the
tag <element_name> . This is simply
the element name surrounded by left and right angle
brackets. Most elements mark blocks of the document
for particular purpose or formatting: the above
<element_name> tag
marks the beginning of such as section. The
end of this section would then be marked by the
ending tag </element_name> .
For example, the heading at the top of this page
is marked by the element H1 (a level 1 heading)
which is simply
<H1> 2. Elements in HTML </H1>.
Empty Elements
Some elements are empty: that is, they do
not affect a block of the document in some way. These
elements do not require an ending tag.
An example is the <HR> element, which
draws a horizontal line across the page.
This element would simply be entered as
<HR>
Upper and Lower Case
Element names are case independent. Thus the
the horizontal rule element can be written as any of
<hr>, <Hr> or
<HR>.
Elements can have Arguments
Many elements can have arguments that pass parameters to
the interpreter handling this element. These arguments
are called attributes of the element. For example,
consider the element A, which marks a region of text as
the beginning (or end) of a hypertext link. This element
can have several attributes. One of them, HREF, specifies
the hypertext document that the marked piece of text is
linked to. To specify this in the tag for A we
write
<A HREF="http://www.somewhere.ca/file.html"> marked text </a>.
so that the attribute HREF is assigned the indicated value.
Note that the A element is not empty, and that it is closed
by the tag </a>.
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