The anatomy of an HTML elment: The first less than symbol, first greater than symbol, and text in between the two is called the start tag, as it starts the element. The text string consisting of a series letters followed by an equals sign followed by another series of letters enclosed in quote marks is called an attribute. HTML elements may have more than one attribute, or none at all in some cases. The second less than symbol, forward slash, second greater than symbol, and text in between the two is called the end tag, as it ends the element. Both tags together plus the text in between the two is the element.