Confused with 2 things from html

Hi, I'm currently trying to get my head around html, but I'm having trouble trying to understand these 2 things

Code:

<span> <abbr>

I can't seem to find a purpose or use for them. I know I could just ignore them, but I'd rather know what they are used for and an example maybe? thanks, D.

 

I don't think abbr is techincally part of HTML. It's one of those tags netscape made up back in the day and it's pretty useless. It's a logical style used to highlight an abbreviation. Which essentially means it does nothing, unless of course you run Netscape 4 or up. It's not a real tag.

As for span, now that is a real tag. Although a lot of peopel ignore since it does serve much purpose unless you use a style sheet. It's essentially used to apply styles to an area. For example you could use it to apply a diffrent background colour to the area within the tag. But that's only when used with style sheets. If you arn't using style sheets it serves little purpose.