What is HTML?

HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language. It is the "code" that makes it possible for you to incorporate pictures into your text documents, use a variety of different type styles, or make hypertext links from one document to another. At least 99% of the Web pages you have seen were likely written in HTML. It is very powerful, and sometimes cryptic-looking, but fundamentally very simple.

HTML files are mostly just plain text, but with HTML "tags" thrown in. These tags are always surrounded by less-than ("<") and greater-than (">") signs to separate them from the regular text. Here is an example:

I am going to eat a <B>large</B> taco.

These particular tags are how HTML does boldfacing: a <B> means "begin boldfacing" and </B> means "end boldfacing". The end result looks like:

I am going to eat a large taco.

So, now that you get the idea, I will turn you over to a few decent HTML guides that other people on the Net have done.

• WebCom's Introduction to HTML, which is part of their excellent Guide to Publishing on the Web.
• NCSA's Beginner's Guide to HTML