Suppose, for example, that we wanted to generate an HTML document based on a database of client information. Since HTML does not include elements that identify objects such as "client", "telephone number", "email address", etc., we use DIV and SPAN to achieve the desired structural and presentational effects. We might use the TABLE element as follows to structure the information:Client information:Last name:BoyeraFirst name:StephaneTel:(212) 555-1212Email:sb@foo.orgClient information:Last name:LafonFirst name:YvesTel:(617) 555-1212Email:yves@coucou.com

The span element doesn't mean anything on its own, but can be useful when used together with the global attributes, e.g. class, lang, or dir. It represents its children.
In this example, a code fragment is marked up using span elements and class attributes so that its keywords and identifiers can be color-coded from CSS:

for (j = 0; j < 256; j++) {
  i_t3 = (i_t3 & 0x1ffff) | (j << 17);
  i_t6 = (((((((i_t3 >> 3) ^ i_t3) >> 1) ^ i_t3) >> 8) ^ i_t3) >> 5) & 0xff;
  if (i_t6 == i_t1)
    break;
}

Contexts in which this element can be used:
Where phrasing content is expected.

Phrasing content is the text of the document, as well as elements that mark up that text at the intra-paragraph level. Runs of phrasing content form paragraphs.

As a general rule, elements whose content model allows any phrasing content should have either at least one descendant Text node that is not inter-element whitespace, or at least one descendant element node that is embedded content. For the purposes of this requirement, nodes that are descendants of del elements must not be counted as contributing to the ancestors of the del element.
Most elements that are categorized as phrasing content can only contain elements that are themselves categorized as phrasing content, not any flow content.

The space characters are always allowed between elements. User agents represent these characters between elements in the source markup as text nodes in the DOM. Empty text nodes and text nodes consisting of just sequences of those characters are considered inter-element whitespace.

The space characters, for the purposes of this specification, are U+0020 SPACE, U+0009 CHARACTER TABULATION (tab), U+000A LINE FEED (LF), U+000C FORM FEED (FF), and U+000D CARRIAGE RETURN (CR).

Embedded content is content that imports another resource into the document, or content from another vocabulary that is inserted into the document.