Are
,
, and all basically the same thing?

Question

I hear they all are basically putting elements in groups, so could all these elements be used the same way?

On an HTML level, yes, they all do the exact same thing. But on a CSS or pragmatic level, they do separate things. It all depends on why you are grouping the specific elements together. — 4castle, Jun 26 '16 at 01:56

score 0 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:16

<section> (HTML 5) and <div> (been around forever), aside from SEO / semantic differences, are very similar -- but <span> is quite different.

As an inline element, <span> has several limitations that the other two do not, a couple of which are:

Cannot style/change height or width
Cannot use margin to raise/lower it above baseline

So what is span for? Usually used to enclose a string of text for any of the following purposes:

Assign an ID or class to a bit of text in order to style it
Assign an ID or class to a bit of text in order to target it for javascript manipulation
With an ID or class, javascript can inject or remove text

References (for further reading) :

What is the difference between <section> and <div>?

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2013/01/the-importance-of-sections/

CSS width of a <span> tag

Does height and width not apply to span?

Are , , and all basically the same thing?

1 Answers1

Are
,
, and all basically the same thing?