HTML Introduction

HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language. It’s the standard language used to create the structure and content of web pages.
HyperText means text that contains links to other pages.

Markup means you “mark up” content with tags to describe what it is (a heading, a paragraph, an image).

Language because it has its own rules and syntax.
HTML is not a programming language. It doesn’t calculate or make decisions. It describes what things are on a page.

How a web page is built

Three technologies work together:

Anatomy of an HTML element

html

<p class="intro">Hello, world!</p>

• <p> is the opening tag
• class="intro" is an attribute (extra information)
• Hello, world! is the content
• </p> is the closing tag
  

Together, all of this is called an element.

A few quick facts

• HTML was created by Tim Berners-Lee around 1991.
• The current standard is HTML5.
• Browsers read HTML top to bottom and display it.
• Tag names are not case sensitive, but lowercase is the convention.
• Some tags are “empty” and have no closing tag, like <br> and <img>.

Learning by Examples

Edit this sample and select Try it Yourself to run it:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head><title>My Page</title></head>
<body>
  <h1>Hello, World!</h1>
  <p>My first HTML page.</p>
</body>
</html>

Try It Yourself Using Notepad

1. Open a plain text editor (Notepad, TextEdit, or VS Code).
2. Paste the document above.
3. Save it as index.html.
4. Double-click the file to open it in your browser.
5. Change the text, save, and refresh to see your edits.