HTML Introduction

What is HTML?

HTML is the standard markup language for creating Web pages.

  • HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language
  • HTML describes the structure of a Web page
  • HTML consists of a series of elements
  • HTML elements tell the browser how to display the content
  • HTML elements are represented by tags
  • HTML tags label pieces of content such as "heading", "paragraph", "table", and so on
  • Browsers do not display the HTML tags, but use them to render the content of the page

A Simple HTML Document

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Page Title</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>My First Heading</h1>
<p>My first paragraph.</p>
</body>
</html>

Example Explained

  • The <!DOCTYPE html> declaration defines this document to be HTML5
  • The <html> element is the root element of an HTML page
  • The <head> element contains meta information about the document
  • The <title> element specifies a title for the document
  • The <body> element contains the visible page content
  • The <h1> element defines a large heading
  • The <p> element defines a paragraph

HTML Tags

HTML tags are element names surrounded by angle brackets:

<tagname>content goes here...</tagname>
  • HTML tags normally come in pairs like <p> and </p>
  • The first tag in a pair is the start tag, the second tag is the end tag
  • The end tag is written like the start tag, but with a forward slash inserted before the tag name

Tip: The start tag is also called the opening tag, and the end tag the closing tag.

Previous Next