A name consists of a letter followed by letters, digits, periods, or hyphens. The length of a name is limited to 72 characters by the `NAMELEN' parameter in the SGML declaration for HTML, 9.5, "SGML Declaration for HTML". Element and attribute names are not case sensitive, but entity names are. For example, `<BLOCKQUOTE>', `<BlockQuote>', and `<blockquote>' are equivalent, whereas `&' is different from `&'.
In a start-tag, the element name must immediately follow the tag open delimiter `<'.