Question about the requirment of an angle bracket

Hi,

I’m trying to learn how to create custom themes. I have this piece of code:

<div class="postSnippet">
				<h1><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title_attribute(); ?>"<strong>></strong> <?php the_title(); ?></a></h1>
				<?php the_content(); ?>
                </div>

Notice the angle bracket in bold. I can’t figure out why it is required. I don’t see what it is closing. Is it a php thing?

Thanks