What do < and > stand for?
I know that the entities < and > are used for < and >, but I am curious what these names stand for.
Does < stand for something like "Left tag" or is it just a code?
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<stands for the less-than sign:< -
>stands for the greater-than sign:> -
≤stands for the less-than or equals sign:≤ -
≥stands for the greater-than or equals sign:≥
< Less than: <
> Greater than: >
They're used to explicitly define less than and greater than symbols. If one wanted to type out <html> and not have it be a tag in the HTML, one would use them. An alternate way is to wrap the <code> element around code to not run into that.
They can also be used to present mathematical operators.
<!ENTITY lt CDATA "<" -- less-than sign, U+003C ISOnum -->
<!ENTITY gt CDATA ">" -- greater-than sign, U+003E ISOnum -->
http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/sgml/entities.html
< == lesser-than == <
> == greater-than == >
Others have noted the correct answer, but have not clearly explained the all-important reason:
- why do we need this?
What do < and > stand for?
-
<stands for the<sign. Just remember: lt == less than -
>stands for the>Just remember: gt == greater than
Why can’t we simply use the < and > characters in HTML?
- This is because the
>and<characters are ‘reserved’ characters in HTML. - HTML is a mark up language: The
<and>are used to denote the starting and ending of different elements: e.g.<h1>and not for the displaying of the greater than or less than symbols. But what if you wanted to actually display those symbols? You would simply use<and>and the browser will know exactly how to display it.
Reference: https://dev.w3.org/html5/html-author/charref