Whats the purpose of the <q> element?

Question

I get it that it makes the quotation symbols, however, I can still just write <p> "hello world" </p> without any problem.

Answer 1

It's used to define an inline quote in your content, semantically it's used for very short quotes, when you want to define a long quote you should use <blockquote>

Remember HTML is not only put text and content into a document some tags have semantic meaning.