What is the difference between p and div

Question

What is the difference between  lt p  and  lt div    Can they be used interchangeably  What are the applications

User · Answer

All good answers  but there s one difference I haven t seen mentioned yet  and that s how browsers render them by default  The major web browsers will render a  lt p gt  tag with margin above and below the paragraph  A  lt div gt  tag will be rendered without any margin at all

User · Answer

A p tag is for a paragraph  generally used for text  A div tag is for division  and generally used for creating sections of text

User · Answer

lt p gt  represents a paragraph and  lt div gt  represents a  division   I suppose the main difference is that divs are semantically  meaningless   where as a  lt p gt  is supposed to represent something relating to the text itself    You wouldn t want to have nested  lt p gt s for example  since that wouldn t make much semantic sense  except in the sense of quotations  Whereas people use nested  lt div gt s for page layout    According to Wikipedia     In HTML  the span and div elements are   used where parts of a document cannot   be semantically  described by other   HTML elements

User · Answer

lt p gt  is semantically used for text  paragraphs usually    lt div gt  is used for a block or area in a webpage  For example it could be used to make the area of a header   They could probably be used interchangeably  but you shouldn t

User · Answer

lt p gt  indicates a paragraph and has semantic meaning    lt div gt  is simply a block container for other content   Anything that can go in a  lt p gt  can go in a  lt div gt  but the reverse is not true   lt div gt  tags can have block-level elements as children   lt p gt  elements cannot   Tae a look at the HTML DTD     lt  ENTITY   inline   PCDATA    fontstyle     phrase     special     formctrl   gt   lt  ENTITY   block       P    heading     list     preformatted    DL   DIV   NOSCRIPT         BLOCKQUOTE   FORM   HR   TABLE   FIELDSET   ADDRESS  gt    lt  ENTITY   flow   block     inline   gt    lt  ELEMENT DIV - -   flow               -- generic language style container -- gt   lt  ELEMENT P - O   inline               -- paragraph -- gt

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The previous code was   lt p class  item  gt  lt span class  name  gt  Scrambled eggs on crusty Italian ciabatta and bruschetta tomato lt  span gt  lt span class  price  gt  12 50 lt  span gt  lt  p gt    So I have to changed it to   lt div class  item  gt  lt span class  name  gt  Scrambled eggs on crusty Italian ciabatta and bruschetta tomato lt  span gt  lt span class  price  gt  12 50 lt  span gt  lt  div gt    It was the easy fix  And the CSS for the above code is   item       position  relative      border  1px solid green      height  30px      item  name       position  absolute      top  0px      left  0px      item  price       position  absolute      right  0px      bottom  0px      So div tag can contain other elements  P should not be forced to do that

User · Answer

The only difference between the two elements is semantics  Both elements  by default  have the CSS rule display  block  hence block-level  applied to them  nothing more  except somewhat extra margin in some instances   However  as aforementioned  they both different greatly in terms of semantics    The  lt p gt  element  as its name somewhat implies  is for paragraphs  Thus   lt p gt  should be used when you want to create blocks of paragraph text    The  lt div gt  element  however  has little to no meaning semantically and therefore can be used as a generic block-level element     most commonly  people use it within layouts because it is meaningless semantically and can be used for generally anything you might require a block-level element for    Link for more detail

User · Answer

DIV is a generic block level container that can contain any other block or inline elements  including other DIV elements  whereas P is to wrap paragraphs  text

User · Answer

They have semantic difference - a  lt div gt  element is designed to describe a container of data whereas a  lt p gt  element is designed to describe a paragraph of content   The semantics make all the difference   HTML is a markup language which means that it is designed to  mark up  content in a way that is meaningful to the consumer of the markup   Most developers believe that the semantics of the document are the default styles and rendering that browsers apply to these elements but that is not the case   The elements that you choose to mark up your content should describe the content   Don t mark up your document based on how it should look - mark it up based on what it is     If you need a generic container purely for layout purposes then use a  lt div gt    If you need an element to describe a paragraph of content then use a  lt p gt    Note  It is important to understand that both  lt div gt  and  lt p gt  are block-level elements which means that most browsers will treat them in a similar fashion

User · Answer

It might be better to see the standard designed by W3 org  Here is the address  http   www w3 org   A  DIV  tag can wrap  P  tag whereas  a  P  tag can not wrap  DIV  tag-so far I know this difference  There may be more other differences

User · Answer

Think of DIV as a grouping element  You put elements in a DIV element so that you can set their alignments  Whereas  p  is simply to create a new paragraph

[html] What is the difference between <p> and <div>?

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