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HTML

HTML stands for "HyperText Markup Language." It is the standard language for describing and structuring the content of a web page.

Consider how a paper or article is structured. Let's use the Wikipedia entry for HTML as an example.

  • The main heading of the page, HTML, appears in large bold text at the very top.
  • Subheadings, like History, Markup, Semantic HTML, and Delivery, organize the page into logical sections. These subheadings are also larger than standard text, but not as large as the main heading.
  • These sections also have their own subheadings that serve a similar purpose, organizing the content into even smaller logical subsections. For example, in History, there are subheadings for Development, HTML version timeline, and HTML draft version timeline.
  • Under headings and subheadings, standard text is separated into paragraphs.
  • There are occasional images, graphics, lists, quotes, and links throughout the article.

In HTML, these discrete units---headings, subheadings, paragraphs, links, etc.---are called elements. You define the type of element by surrounding its content with a pair of tags. For the text-based elements that we've covered so far, there are up to 6 levels of headings that use tags <h1> through <h6>, and paragraphs that use <p> tags (with no numbered levels).

I am some text. However, since I don't have any tags, I don't have a role in an
HTML document.

<p>
  I am also some text, but now I'm a paragraph element because of the p tags.
</p>

<h1>I am the top-level heading and typically appear only once on a page.</h1>
<h2>I am a second-level subheading. You can use me as many times as needed.</h2>
<h3>I am a third-level subheading. Ditto.</h3>

See the Pen HTML Introduction (IMS322 Docs) by Eric Sheffield (@ersheff) on CodePen.

Although some elements, such as headings, have a default appearance that is different from standard text, HTML does not otherwise describe a page's styling or layout. In fact, the very first web page, which can still be viewed here, was created using only HTML tags.