Getting started with HTML: The Basics

HTML text is simply plain text with "markup" tags in it to tell the browser what to do with parts of the document. If you've ever used Word perfect with "Reveal Codes" on, you can see what a marked-up document looks like.
Documents are marked up with tags. Tags are enclosed in angle brackets (< , >) to distinguish them from the text.
Most tags are paired -- that is, there is an opening tag and a closing tag, i.e., Exed text As you can see, the closing tag is preceded by a slash (/). A pair of tags and the material contained inside them is referred to as an element. (The example above is an X element.) Tags can have attributes, which are inserted within the angle brackets of the tag: Exed text Tags do not have to be capitalized, but most people do in order to make reading the HTML easier.