abrou 0 Newbie Poster

I'm fairly new to XML and I have one question that I've been trying to figure out for a long time, but up to now I've been able to ignore. I now think it is causing me problems in my code.

When is a node not an element node? What is an element (how is it different from a node)? Most online places tend to say things like an element is an element node, which is not at all useful.

Thanks!