"HTML" is an acronym for Hyper-Text-Markup-Language. You use HTML to create pages on the World Wide Web.

Suppose you want to advertise a car. It would be easy to compose a simple text file that everyone on the Internet could read. But because you want to sell the car, you want the ad to be as attractive as possible. You want part of the text to be bold, part to be italicized, part to be in larger print, etc. Maybe you even want to link your ad to another page where viewers can e-mail you. HTML adds such frills.

If you've ever looked at an HTML file, you may have noticed that it looks a lot like a normal text file with a lot of angle brackets (">" and "<") thrown in. Text enclosed in angle brackets are HTML "tags." The tags in an HTML file tell a web browser how to format the rest of the text.

Consider the following line of HTML:

I will take <BOLD> $2500 </BOLD> for the car.

When a Web browser reads that line, it prints "I will take" in the normal font, switches to bold, prints "$2500," switches out of bold, and prints "for the car" in the normal font.

Other HTML tags include <CENTER>, <HR> ("horizontal rule"), and <BR> (for "break," or "skip a line").

HTML is simple enough to be used by everyone, but typing the tags can be tedious. Web authoring programs allow you to disregard HTML. Instead, you manipulate how the finished page will look on a browser, and the authoring program does the dirty work of generating the appropriate HTML code.

Existing web pages are a good place to find HTML tips and tricks. With Netscape Navigator, selecting "VIEW" and "DOCUMENT SOURCE" displays the HTML code that is generating the page on your browser.

Related Links:

• Advanced HTML
• Using the Web at MTSU
• Web Terms and Acronyms