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

This visualization can help us to find out difference between concept of element and tag (each indent means contain):

- element

        - content:

            - text 

            - other elements 

            - or empty

        - and its markup

            - tags (start or end tag)

                - element name

                - angle brackets < >

                - or attributes (just for start tag)

                - or slash /