Why is an HTML element rather than an HTML entity?

Question

Why indeed? Wouldn\'t something like &br; be more appropriate?

Answer 1

Entities are content, tags are structure or layout (very roughly speaking). It seems whoever made the
a tag decided that breaking a line has more to do with structure and layout than with content. Not being able to actually "see" a
I'd tend to agree. Oh and I'm making this up as I go so feel free to disagree ;)