I wrote this sentence
To detect the boundaries of the segments, we may use text and visual signals as we scan the page top-down or bottom-up. In this paper, we refer to such (features/items/elements/signals ?) with the term anchor. (In our terms/in this term ?), they are mainly textual elements within the page content, which serve as the starting point of a data region or a distinctive feature within them.
Sometimes I want to refer to something in general (like item, element...). what are the words for it in order of generality and commonness?