Definition of HTML "top element"
The top element, sometimes called the document element or root element (not to be confused with the root node or sectioning root element), is a single element in the DOM that encloses all of the other text and markup tags in the document except for any comments outside the top element and a few leading declarations and processing instructions. One of these declarations, the DOCTYPE declaration, includes the document element name, which is html for HTML documents. The parent node of the top element and any other nodes outside of it is the root node. In an HTML document, the top element is created by the <html> start tag at the beginning of a document and the </html> end tag at the end of the document, which enclose all other HTML tags in the document.