HTML p tag defines a paragraph in a webpage. It is a Paired Tag, i.e., it comes with an opening <p> and a closing </p> tag.
A <p> tag is very important, as all the content written on a website needs to get formatted in the form of paragraphs. Browsers automatically add blank lines above and below a paragraph. It separates a paragaph from other content or other paragraphs on the page.
HTML Paragraphs are block level elements, i.e., a new paragraph will always start from a new line. Also, p tags gets automatically closed if another block-element gets inserted before the </p> tag.
Look at the example below, to know how to use <p> tag.
This is First Paragraph
This is Second Paragraph
This is Third Paragraph
If you put a lot of spaces inside the HTML p tag, browser removes those unnecessary spaces while displaying the page. The browser counts multiple consecutive spaces and lines as a single one.
You can add spaces and new lines on a paragraph by using <pre> tag but don't practice it immaturely. The spaces will look poor on the website. In the example below, as you can see in the results, all the space is ignored by the browser.
This is First Paragraph.
This is Second Paragraph.
This is Third Paragraph.
HTML pre tag defines preformatted text. The text inside a <pre> tag is displayed in a fixed-width font, and it preserves both spaces and line breaks.
The pre tag is a paired tag; it displays text as it was written within the tag. Browser won't omit consecutive spaces or line breaks. It is used to display a block of code of a programming language or to display a poem with proper line breaks.
In the example below, you can see that the text is displayed as it is, in the browser, as it was written inside the pre tag.
This is a Paragraph Tag. This is a Paragraph Tag. This is a Paragraph Tag. This is a Paragraph Tag.