The Differences Between div and span in HTML

There are several key differences between the <div> and <span> elements in HTML.

First, a <div> is a block-level element, whereas a <span> is an inline element. When applying properties like padding, margins, width, or height, they work natively on a <div>. However, these properties will not affect a <span> unless its display style is changed to block or inline-block.

Second, you can nest a <span> inside a <div>, but you should not nest a <div> inside a <span>. Doing so violates HTML standards and results in invalid markup.

For more details, check out this excellent discussion on Stack Overflow: What is the difference between HTML tags div and span?