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Occasionally, you may be confronted with the need to write or understand simple HTML - such as when creating text descriptions for online forms.  This article will give you the basics that you need to know about HTML in that scenario.

 

What Is HTML

HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language.  Basically, it's a set of "tags" that surround text and pictures that cause those items to be formatted and laid out in a specific way.  Here's a simple paragraph:

<p>I am a simple paragraph</p>

You'll notice that the text - I am a simple paragraph - is surrounded by "p" tags.  "p" tags indicate that the text should be formatted like a paragraph and they are one of the simplest and most common tags in HTML.  Like virtually all other tags you'll come across, they have a start tag and an end tag.  The start tag - <p> - indicates the start of a paragraph and the end tag </p> indicates the end of the paragraph.

 

Commonly Used Tags

The most commonly used tags you will come across or need to know are as follows:

Paragraph <p>Paragraph</p>
Headings

<h1>Big Heading</h1>

<h2>Medium Big Heading</h2>

<h3>Medium Heading</h3>

<h4>Small Heading</h4>

Line Break

<br/>
Note: Line break tags are "self-closing".  so instead of these having an opening tag and a closing tag, the one tag opens and closes with the "/" character at the end of the tag.

Image

<img href="the_URL_of_the_image_goes_here"/>

Note: Image tags are commonly "self-closing".  so instead of these being an opening tag and a closing tag, the one tag opens and closes with the "/" character at the end of the tag.

 

If you know these tags, you know pretty much everything you'll need for those occasional encounters with HTML on web form titles, etc.

 

 

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