How to Build a Web Site: HTML

Creating Pages With HTML

HTML stands for "Hypertext Markup Language". It's a way for web browers to communicate/display
information that you store on your web server. For example, in the English language you write with
sentences and in HTML you write with tags.

Note: when you start working with HTML and if you don't have access to an HTML editing program
(more on that later), you should use a plain text editor like Notepad, SimpleText, or BBEdit instead of
a word processing program like Microsoft Word or WordPerfect. Why? Word processing programs add
special, invisible commands to the text you type, and these commands will wreck your HTML code.
Plain text editors don't add any extraneous commands -- what you type is what the browser will see
and interpret.

HTML tags are used to tell the browser how you want to display graphics, tables and text.

Tags are enclosed in angle brackets, <like this>. Tags come in two varieties: single tags and paired
tags. The difference is that a single tag works on its own, while a pair of tags must have an open and
closing part. The closing part is just like the opening except that it is prefixed by a slash.

Single tags are used for separators or for inserting a single item. They do not have a matching closing
tag. Some common single tags are:

• <br> marks the end of a line. (stands for line break.)

• <hr> marks a horizontal rule. (A line across the page.)
• <img src=""> inserts an image. (The location of the image on your server goes between the
quotation marks)

Some common paired tags are:

• <p> and </p> to start and close a paragraph.

• <b> and </b> for bold.
• <i> and </i> for italics.
• <em> and </em> for emphasis (usually interpreted as italics by the browser).
• <strong> and </strong> for strong text (usually interpreted as bold by the browser).
• <h1> and </h1> for the biggest heading.
• <ol> and </ol> for an ordered (numbered) list.
• <ul> and </ul> for an unordered (bulleted) list
• <font> and </font> for text font changes.
• ^and for superscript text.
• _and for subscript text.
• <a href=""> and </a> for a hypertext reference. (The link location goes between the
quotation marks)

It is important to make sure that pair tags are always closed properly and that they are nested properly
(e.g., that the tag that comes last is closed first and vice versa). For instance, if you wanted to create a
section of red, bold text, you should write the code like this:

<font color="red"><b>A sentence.</b></font>

not: