An HTML tag consists of the following, in this order:
the left angle bracket < (same as the "less than" symbol)
optionally, the slash /, which means that the tag is an
end tag
which closes some structure; thus, in this context you can
read the / character as end of ...
the tag name, e.g. TITLE or PRE
optionally, if the tag can have
attributes, a blank followed by
one or more attribute specifications like
ALIGN=CENTER
the right angle bracket > (same as the "greater than" symbol).