By default, it displays the last lines when used in the following form:
tail [filename]
We can also use it to display the last n lines/words/characters/etc by using different flags. For example:
tail -n 11 [filename] # Last 11 lines
tail -c 20 [filename] # Last 20 characters
We can also specify a certain number of lines to be displayed and list multiple filenames as well. It may also be used to display a specified number of bytes from an input file. Click here for more details about using the tail command.