HTML Tags

HTML files are simply text files that have been "marked up" with tags. These tags are special codes that tell the HTML document what particular pieces of text mean. Every tag begins with a less-than sign and ends with a greater-than sign. In the middle is the tags name. Like this:

Usually tags come in pairs: a start tag and an end tag. End tags look like start tags with a backslash in from of them. These help the browser know what text that tag refers to. In this case the "<p>" tag refers to a paragraph. That paragraph is only one sentence long and ends with the "</p>."

Some tags do not need an end tags. These tags do not have any content that needs to be enclosed. The example here is the "<br/>" tag. It stands for a line break. These tags have a backslash right before the greater-than sign.

Some html tags have attributes. These attributes help describe the tag. Attributes always appear in the start tag. They begin with the attribute name followed by an equals sign, followed by the value of the attribute. The value should always be enclosed in quotation marks. This "<a>" tag stands for anchor. You probably know it better as a link. It has one attribute whose value is the address of my website.

Here is the whole tag with start tag, content and end tag.

It would produce the following result when scene in a brower: Kelly Egan

Tags can have multiple attribute/value pairs describing different aspects of the tag, such as width height, the location of an image to be displayed. The details of how all these attributes would be an entire workshop in itself.