An HTML element is an individual component within a web page. Most elements will consist of a starting element tag, content, then an ending tag. However, some elements do not require an ending tag and some elements do not contain content.
Here is a paragraph element. It has a starting and an ending tag and contains content.
<p>I am a paragraph!</p>
Here is a heading 1 element:
<h1>Heading 1 Element</h1>
Some HTML elements, such as input fields, do not require an ending tag.
<input type="text" id="username" name="username" placeholder="username">
And then there are HTML elements that do not contain any content to display. Some are purely there to provide the web browser with information. The viewport tag tells the web browser how to scale the page.
<meta name='viewport' content='width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0'>