What is the difference between HTML div and span elements?

I would like to ask for some simple examples showing the uses of <div> and <span>. I've seen them both used to mark a section of a page with an id or class, but I'm interested in knowing if there are times when one is preferred over the other.

• div is a block element
• span is an inline element.

This means that to use them semantically, divs should be used to wrap sections of a document, while spans should be used to wrap small portions of text, images, etc.

For example:

<div>This a large main division, with <span>a small bit</span> of spanned text!</div>

Note that it is illegal to place a block-level element within an inline element, so:

<div>Some <span>text that <div>I want</div> to mark</span> up</div>

...is illegal.

EDIT: As of HTML5, some block elements can be placed inside of some inline elements. See the MDN reference here for a pretty clear listing. The above is still illegal, as <span> only accepts phrasing content, and <div> is flow content.

You asked for some concrete examples, so is one taken from my bowling website, http://www.bowlsk.com">BowlSK</a>;:

<div id="header">
  <div id="userbar">
    Hi there, <span class="username">Chris Marasti-Georg</span> |
    <a href="/edit-profile.html">Profile</a> |
    <a href="https://www.bowlsk.com/_ah/logout?...">Sign out</a>
  </div>
  <h1><a href="/">Bowl<span class="sk">SK</span></a></h1>
</div>

Ok, what's going on?

Also note that HTML5 includes a broad new set of elements that define common page structures, such as article, section, nav, etc.

Section 4.4 of the HTML 5 working draft lists them and gives hints as to their usage. HTML5 is still a working spec, so nothing is "final" yet, but it is highly doubtful that any of these elements are going anywhere. There is a javascript hack that you will need to use if you want to style these elements in some older version of IE - You need to create one of each element using document.createElement before any of those elements are specified in your source. There are a bunch of libraries that will take care of this for you - a quick Google search turned up html5shiv.

Just for the sake of completeness, I invite you to think about it like this:

• There are lots of block elements (linebreaks before and after) defined in HTML, and lots of inline tags (no linebreaks).
• But in modern HTML all elements are supposed to have meanings: a <p> is a paragraph, an <li> is a list item, etc., and we're supposed to use the right tag for the right purpose -- not like in the old days when we indented using <blockquote> whether the content was a quote or not.
• So, what do you do when there is no meaning to the thing you're trying to do? There's no meaning to a 400px-wide column, is there? You just want your column of text to be 400px wide because that suits your design.
• For this reason, they added two more elements to HTML: the generic, or meaningless elements <div> and <span>, because otherwise, people would go back to abusing the elements which do have meanings.

There are already good, detailed answers here, but no visual examples, so here's a quick illustration:

<div>This is a div.</div>
<div>This is a div.</div>
<div>This is a div.</div>
<span>This is a span.</span>
<span>This is a span.</span>
<span>This is a span.</span>

<div> is a block tag, while <span> is an inline tag.

<div> is a block-level element and <span> is an inline element.

If you wanted to do something with some inline text, <span> is the way to go since it will not introduce line breaks that a <div> would.

As noted by others, there are some semantics implied with each of these, most significantly the fact that a <div> implies a logical division in the document, akin to maybe a section of a document or something, a la:

<div id="Chapter1">
   <p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, <span id="SomeSpecialText1">consectetuer adipiscing</span> elit. Duis congue vehicula purus.</p>
   <p>Nam <span id="SomeSpecialText2">eget magna nec</span> sapien fringilla euismod. Donec hendrerit.</p> 
</div>

The real important difference is already mentioned in Chris' answer. However, the implications won't be obvious for everybody.

As an inline element, <span> may only contain other inline elements. The following code is therefore wrong:

<span><p>This is a paragraph</p></span>

The above code isn't valid. To wrap block-level elements, another block-level element must be used (such as <div>). On the other hand, <div> may only be used in places where block-level elements are legal.

Furthermore, these rules are fixed in (X)HTML and they are not altered by the presence of CSS rules! So the following codes are also wrong!

<span style="display: block"><p>Still wrong</p></span>
<span><p style="display: inline">Just as wrong</p></span>

As mentioned in other answers, by default div will be rendered as a block element, while span will be rendered inline within its context. But neither has any semantic value; they exist to allow you to apply styling and an identity to any given bit of content. Using styles, you can make a div act like a span and vice-versa.

One of the useful styles for div is inline-block

Examples:

1. http://dustwell.com/div-span-inline-block.html

2. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9189810/css-display-inline-vs-inline-block

I have used inline-block to a great success, in game web projects.

The significance of "block element" is implied but never stated explicitly. If we ignore all the theory (theory is good) then the following is a pragmatic comparison. The following:

<p>This paragraph <span>has</span> a span.</p>
<p>This paragraph <div>has</div> a div.</p>

produces:

This paragraph has a span.

This paragraph

has
a div.

That shows that not only should a div not be used inline, it simply won't produce the desired affect.

I would say that if you know a bit of spanish to look at this page, where is properly explained.

However, a fast definition would be that div is for dividing sections and span is for applying some kind of style to an element within another block element like div.

Div is a block element and span is an inline element and its width depends upon the content of it self where div does not

Just wanted to add some historical context to how there came to be span vs div

History of span:

> On July 3, 1995, Benjamin C. W. Sittler proposes a generic text > container tag for applying styles to certain blocks of text. > The rendering is neutral except if used in conjunction of a > stylesheet. There is a debate around versus about > readability, meaning. Bert Bos is mentioning the extensibility nature > of the element through the class attribute (with values such as > city, person, date, etc.). Paul Prescod is worried that both elements > will be abused. He is opposed to text mentionning that "any new > element should be on an old one" and adding "If we create a tag with > no semantics it can be used anywehere without ever being wrong. We > must force authors to properly tag the semantics of their document. We > must force editor vendors to make that choice explicit in their > interfaces."

- Source (w3 wiki)

From the RFC draft that introduces span:

> First, a generic con- > tainer is needed to carry the LANG and BIDI attributes in > cases where no other element is appropriate; the SPAN ele- > ment is introduced for that purpose.

- Source (IETF Draft)

History of div: > DIV elements can be used to structure HTML documents as a hierarchy of divisions. > > ... > > CENTER was introduced by Netscape before they added support for the > HTML 3.0 DIV element. It is retained in HTML 3.2 on account of its > widespread deployment.

HTML 3.2 Spec

In a nutshell, both elements arose out of a need for a more semantically-generic container. Span was proposed as a more generic replacement for a <text> element to style text. Div was proposed as a generic way to divide pages and had the added benefit of replacing the <center> tag for center-aligning content. Div has always been a block element because of its history as a page divider. Span has always been an inline element because its original purpose was text styling and today div and span have both arrived at being generic elements with default block and inline display properties respectively.

In HTML there are tags that add structure or semantics to content. For example the <p> tag is used to identify a paragraph. Another example is the <ol> tag for an ordered list.

When there is no suitable tag available in HTML as shown above, the <div> and <span> tags are usually resorted to.

The <div> tag is used to identify a blocklevel section/division of a document that has a line break both before and after it.

Examples of where div tags can be used are headers, footers, navigations etc. However in HTML 5 these tags have already been provided.

The <span> tag is used to identify an inline section/division of a document.

For example a span tag can be used to add inline pictographs to an element.

Remember, basically

<p>Am writing<span class="time">this answer</span> in my free time of my day.</p>

    <div class="large-time">
    <p>Am writing <span class="time"> this answer</span> in my free time of my day. 
    </p>
    </div>

It's plain and simple.

• use of span does not affect the layout because it's inline(in line (one should not confuse because things could be wrapped))
• use of div affects the layout, the content inside appears in the new line(block element), when the element you wanna add has no special semantic meaning and you want it to appear in new line use <div>.