## Lesson 3: Basic Tags and Formatting

So you're probably thinking "Okay, I knew that stuff. Teach me something I don't know." Okay, be patient. I think this lesson will give you your fill.

HTML is a language that is coded with tags. They are called tags because they tag parts of a webpage for formatting in a browser. HTML tags are very easy to spot in web page source. They are the things shown that start with a < and end with a >. Most HTML tags have an opening tag (<tag>) to start formatting text and a closing tag (</tag>) to end the formatting.

There are some HTML tags that are absolutely necessary in an HTML page. Those tags are as follows:

<HTML>' and </HTML>': Usually put at the top (<HTML>) and bottom (</HTML>) of an HTML page. This tag tells the browser that this page is an HTML page.

<HEAD> and </HEAD>: This is where information about the entire page is placed.

<TITLE> and </TITLE>: This tag needs to be put between the <HEAD> and </HEAD>. This tag gives a name for your page. The name won't be shown in the the text of the page, but rather in the top of the browser window.

<BODY> and </BODY>: This tag defines the body portion of the page. Later we will learn how to use the <BODY> tag to add background colors, text colors, and margins.

Now that we know the required tags, I'm going to put my text that I gathered in the last lesson in the proper web page format.

<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Justin's Homepage</TITLE>
</HEAD>

<BODY> Welcome to Justin's Web Page!

Hi, My name is Justin. I built this web page because I love coding in HTML! I could do it all day long!

I am a lover of programming languages, and love to design and produce web content.

Thanks for visiting my page!

Yours Truly,
-Justin

</BODY> </HTML> But wait 1 second! I typed that, and opened it with my browser, and it does'nt come out like that! What? Does it come out like this:

Welcome to Justin's Web Page! Hi, My name is Justin. I built this web page because I love coding in HTML! I could do it all day long! I am a lover of programming languages, and love to design and produce web content. Thanks for visiting my page! Yours Truly, -Justin

Yes? Ohmygod! We forgot the formatting tags!

The <p> tag can add paragraph spacing to your page. The <BR> tag adds a single line break to your page.

These tags do not need a <p> and </p>, or <BR> and </BR>, unlike the other tags.

So now our page is coded like this:

<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Justin's Homepage</TITLE>
</HEAD>

<BODY>

Welcome to Justin's Web Page!<p>

Hi, My name is Justin. I built this web page because I love coding in HTML! I could do it all day long!<p>

I am a lover of programming languages, and love to design and produce web content.<p>

Thanks for visiting my page!<p>

Yours Truly,<BR>
-Justin

</BODY>
</HTML>

Great! We have format! Now i'll bet you want that first line to be large, right? This can be accomplished by what's called a "header". The header is made by putting in <Hx> "header text goes here" </Hx>, where the "x" is a number from 1-6, the bigger the number the bigger the header. So in our page it looks like <H2>Welcome to Justin's Web Page!</H2>. Note that i removed the <p> tag, since header are already paragraph spaced!

Go ahead and make your page, save it with a ".html" extension at the end (HTML pages all need either .htm or .html extensions) open it with your browser and meet me at the next lesson!

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