HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) is the language of Web pages. An HTML document is nothing more than a normal text document that has been "marked up" by embedding special tags that indicate where special formatting of the text should occur. All HTML tags are distinguished from the normal text by being surrounded with the "<>" characters. The tags themselves are not displayed when the page is viewed through a browser but, instead, effect how the text is displayed. Without any tags, text would appear continuous without line breaks or paragraphs.

Below are listed a few common tags that are essential for formatting text. The best way to learn HTML is to start with some simple text and dress it up incrementally until the desired effect is achieved.