This has effectively nothing to do with computer science in general.
It’s just the structure of an Extensible Markup Language (XML) closing tag.
XML is a format based on tags, and HTML, for displaying web pages, is a derivative of XML.
Tags are used to delimit a piece of information and giving it the meaning you want, or in HTML, the meaning the tag is meant for (there are a limited number of predetermined tags - but you can create ones, without entering in the details).
An HTML example:
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- "P" is for "Paragraph"
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- "UL" is for "Unordered List"
- while "LI" is for "List Item"
- So this is how we represent a simple bullet-points list
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- In HTML you also have "void elements/tags" that don't have closing delimiter, because they have no content.
- Here is a blank line insertion in HTML5:
- Or in previous HTML versions:
- An image:
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That’s why you can sometimes see people writing things like :
- HTML is great! No, that's degenerate XML.
When they’re afraid their sense of irony isn’t understood.
Also, the symbol > alone doesn’t mean anything and isn’t valid HTML, but is often used as a “logo” for HTML. Like on a button that gives you HTML code for integrating a video in your website or blog, for example.