Links and Webs - HTML and XHTML: The Definitive Guide - page 316

6.3. Creating Hyperlinks
Use the HTML/XHTML <a> tag to create links to other documents and to
name anchors for fragment indentifiers within documents.
6.3.1. The <a> Tag
You will use the <a> tag most commonly with its href attribute to create
a hypertext link, or hyperlink , to another place in the same document or
to another document. In these cases, the current document is the source
of the link; the value of the href attribute, a URL, is the target. [*]
[*] You may run across the terms head and tail , which reference the target and source of a hyperlink.
This naming scheme assumes that the referenced document (the head) has many tails that are embed-
ded in many referencing documents throughout the Web. We find this naming convention confusing and
stick to the concept of source and target documents throughout this topic.
The other way you can use the <a> tag is with the name attribute, to mark
a hyperlink target, or fragment identifier, in a document. This method,
although part of the HTML 4 and XHTML standards, is slowly succumb-
ing to the id attribute, which lets you mark nearly any element, including
paragraphs, divisions, forms, and so on, as a hyperlink target.