By John Nann, Educational Technology Specialist/
Legal Reference Librarian
Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is a language used to create web pages and other documents that can contain text, graphics, and connections called hyperlinks. HTML uses a variety of Tags (code commands) to designate actions. The following is a list of basic tags.
Note: Almost all tags follow the following format: <TAG> . . . . </TAG>. (e.g. <B> . . . . </B> will bold everything between the tags.
DOCUMENT STRUCTURE TAGS
<HTML> . . . . </HTML> -- Indicates an html document.
<HEAD> . . . . </HEAD> -- Delineates the 'head' of the document.
<TITLE> . . . . </TITLE> -- Delineates the 'title' of the document.
<BODY> . . . . </BODY> -- Delineates the 'body' of the document.
Basic structure of almost every html document:
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Text</TITLE>
<BODY>
Text
</BODY>
</HTML>
DOCUMENT "LOOK" TAGS
<H1> . . . . </H1> (or H2, or H3, etc.) - Size of the heading between the tags (1 is the largest).
<FONT SIZE="X"> . . . . </FONT> -- Specifies that the text will be X font size.
<B> . . . . </B> -- Bold text.
<I> . . . . </I> -- Italic text.
<EM> . . . . </EM> -- Emphasis, usually (depends upon the browser) italics.
<STRONG> . . . . </STRONG> -- Strong emphasis, usually bold.
<HR> -- Horizontal Rule (line).
<BR> -- Line Break (Differentiate from a paragraph tags which adds an extra line).
<BLOCKQUOTE> . . . . </BLOCKQUOTE> -- Use for long quotes and to indent text.
<CENTER> . . . . </CENTER> -- The text will be centered on the page.
<P> . . . . </P> -- The material between the tags is a paragraph.
LIST TAGS
<UL> . . . . </UL> -- The entries will be a bulleted list.
<OL> . . . . </OL> -- The entries will be a numbered list.
<LI> -- List Entry
IMAGES and LINKS
<A HREF="XXXXXX"> . . . . </A> -- The material between the tags is a hypertext link. The material in quotes is the address. <A HREF="http://www2.bc.edu/~nannj">John's Homepage</A> The words 'John's homepage will appear as a hypertext link. When you click on them, they will take you to the address Http://www2.bc.edu/~nannj
<A NAME="anchor"> . . . . </A> and <A HREF="#anchor"> . . . . </A> -- allows linking to another spot on the same page. The anchor is the spot that you want to arrive at after clicking on the hypertext link: the name tag goes there. The hypertext tag will take you to the name tag . . .
<IMG SRC="XXXXX" ALIGN=MIDDLE> -- An image at location (or filename) XXXXX will appear in the page and will align in the middle of the page.
TABLES
<TABLE> . . . . </TABLE> -- The material between these tags will be a table. (<TABLE BORDER="2"> will make a table with a border 2 pixels wide.
<CAPTION> . . . . </CAPTION> -- A table caption.
<TR> . . . . </TR> -- A table row.
<TH> . . . . </TH> -- A table heading cell.
<TD> . . . . </TD> -- A table data cell.
ETC.
And there are a lot more . . .