Depending on who is teaching, different terms mean the same things...

The term **elements** means the tags.

The term **attributes** means properties.

<Code
  language="xml"
  text={`<tag property="value">`}
/>

Part of the previous example of XML looks like this:

<Code
  language="xml"
  text={`<movie>
      <title> Finding Nemo </title>
      <age_group> Kids </age_group>
      <comments> Fish are friends, not food. </comments>
</movie>`}
/>

Each piece of information is in its own element (tag). The child elements (nested tags) may be shown as attributes (properties) instead of elements. Here is the same example switching the TITLE tag into a property instead of being a full tag on its own...

<Code
  language="xml"
  text={`<movie title="Finding Nemo">
      <age_group> Kids </age_group>
      <comments> Fish are friends, not food. </comments>
</movie>`}
/>

The same effect can be done for any of the other child elements as well...

<Code
  language="xml"
  text={`<movie title="Finding Nemo" age_group="Kids" comments="Fish are friends, not food">
</movie>`}
/>

Technically, both styles of coding are correct. Having items as properties instead of tags though kinda defeats the purpose of modular XML processing.

Learn about how and why you'd use elements and attributes when working in XML.

Elements and Attributes

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