What is the difference between HTML tags and elements?

Question

I notice that most people use the words HTML tags and HTML elements interchangeably.

But what is the difference between them?

The way I s

Answer 1

HTML tag is just opening or closing entity. For example:

and

are called HTML tags

HTML element encompasses opening tag, closing tag, content (optional for content-less tags) Eg:

This is the content

: This complete thing is called a HTML element