What are HTML Tags?
HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language, and HTML tags are instructions placed within angle brackets < > that tell your computer how the text and graphics (pictures or images) on a web page should be displayed. In most cases, the tags come in pairs like this:
HTML tags tell a browser how to display information. Users of word processors were once required to type control-b to start bolding text and then control-b to stop bolding. Likewise, HTML tags usually (but not always) consist of a pair of tags that “turn on” and then “turn off” directions to affect text display. HTML tags are usually English words (such as blockquote) or abbreviations (such as “p” for paragraph), but they are distinguished from the regular text because they are placed in small angle brackets. So the paragraph tag is
, and the blockquote tag is
. Some tags dictate how the page will be formatted (for instance,
begins a new paragraph), and others dictate how the words appear ( makes text bold). When you open a tag- say
– you must also close it off with another tag – in this case,
. Note the slash – / – before the word “blockquote”; that’s what distinguishes a closing tag from an opening tag.
HTML tags are simply the the instructions that tell the web browser what to do. These are surrounded by < and > and usually come in pairs and have somehting in between. An example of an HTML tag is: and . You can click here to get back to Part 2 of the HTML Help page. You are visitor number URL:http://anduin.eldar.org/~ben/html/tags2.
HTML is short for Hypertext Markup Language, the text-based language used to write Web pages. HTML tags are coding instructions imbedded in the HTML document. A Web browser is designed to read the instructions, or HTML tags, in order to render the page graphically. In other words, a Web browser translates HTML tags into visual effects that mold the way an HTML document looks to the viewer. The simplest HTML tags arrange text into blocks, designate the font or letter-style, and size of the type. Bold, italic and underline are each identified within an HTML tag that precedes the letter or word(s) to be effected. The tag appears again at the end of the chosen text with a slash to indicate the effect ends there. For example, see how the following sentence appears in HTML: HTML tags are the core of Hypertext Markup Language. HTML tags are the core of Hypertext Markup Language. The “b” stands for bold and HTML tags are always enclosed in angled brackets, with the closing tag starting
in the style of header level 3 (We’ll learn more about these tags later). HTML tags may tell a web browser to bold the text, italicize it, make it into a header, or make it be a hypertext link to another web page. It is important to note that the ending tag, contains the “/” slash character. This “/” slash tells a web browser to stop tagging the text. Many HTML tags are paired this way. If you forget the slash, a web browser will continue the tag for the rest of the text in your document, producing undesirable results (as an experiment you may want to try this later). NOTE: A web browser does not care if you use upper or lower case. For example,
…
is no different from
