Writing HTML

A brief guide to writing HTML

Introduction

HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language. It is a way of marking documents so that they can be displayed in a variety of ways without losing the structure of the document. This markup is done via tags. For example, the title of this document, "Writing HTML," was specified by <TITLE>Writing HTML</TITLE>. The tags <TITLE> and </TITLE> mark the start and end of the segment of text which is being described as the title. For example, the tag <P> marks the beginning of a paragraph, and the tag, </P> marks the end of the paragraph. Some tags are optional, however since in past versions of HTML, they weren't always used. These include the </P> tag, the </LI> tag, and the </DD> tag.

References

There are many good documents for learning HTML. Two good references are:

the HTML Quick Reference is the best starting place to get a quick overview of what is available, and is also a good place to check for specifics.
the available tags are also documented in the W3C's complete specification.
Also, Sizzling HTML Jalfrezi—HTML by Example is a good reference for everything you could want to know about HTML.

There are also some general guides for writing in HTML.

For a simple, and not very comprehensive, overview there is the HTML Primer written at NCSA.
HMC Academic Computing also has a Quick Guide to HTML in Acrobat PDF format.

Outside of these references and guides, the W3C has the best document for finding other relevant information on HTML.

Copyright (c) HMC Computer Science Department. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with the no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled ``GNU Free Documentation License.''

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Last Modified Wednesday, 23-May-2001 09:25:21 PDT