---
title: "What’s the difference between XML and HTML?"  
description: "What’s the difference between XML and HTML?"  
author: "Vijay Shukla"  
published: 2013-04-02  
updated: 2020-09-23  
canonical: https://www.mindstick.com/interview/1694/what-s-the-difference-between-xml-and-html  
category: "xml"  
tags: ["xml"]  
reading_time: 2 minutes  

---

# What’s the difference between XML and HTML?

XML and HTML look parallel. Both are used tags and attributes (such as align=”left” or type=”personal”) to add information to the content. In fact, a carefully prepared HTML document can double as an XML document. The difference is that HTML is a well-defined set of elements and attributes.

On the other hand, HTML has somewhat looser rules than XML, so some HTML documents are not well-formed XML documents.

## Answers

### Answer by Anonymous User

## Key Differences Between XML and HTML

- The XML language is a text-based markup language which has the self-describing structure and can effectively define another markup language. Even then, HTML is a predefined markup language and has a limited capacity.
- Where XML provides logical structuring of the document while HTML structure is predefined where “head” and “body” tags are used. Where HTML is case insensitive. But XML is case sensitive.
- Where HTML was designed with an emphasis on the presentational features of the data. opposite of this, XML is data specific where the data storage and transfer was the prior concern.
- Into the XML does not permit any mistake if there are some errors in the code it could not be parsed. Inversely, in HTML small errors can be neglected.
- Here White spaces in XML are used for specific use as XML considers every single character. Even then, HTML can ignore white spaces.
- That is the tags in XML are mandatory to be closed, whereas in HTML an open tag can also work completely fine.
- The Nesting process in XML should be done correctly, it has a big importance in XML syntax. Conversely, HTML does not care much about nesting.

### Answer by Vijay Shukla

XML and HTML look parallel. Both are used tags and attributes (such as align=”left” or type=”personal”) to add information to the content. In fact, a carefully prepared HTML document can double as an XML document. The difference is that HTML is a well-defined set of elements and attributes.

On the other hand, HTML has somewhat looser rules than XML, so some HTML documents are not well-formed XML documents.


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Original Source: https://www.mindstick.com/interview/1694/what-s-the-difference-between-xml-and-html

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