This web site serves as a quick reference to Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). HTML is the standard language used for creating and recognizing hypermedia documents on the Web. The HTML language consists of a number of special text tags used by the browser to setup the document, format text, and establish links to Internet resources. When a web browser displays a page such as the one you are reading now, it reads from a plain text file, and looks for special codes or "tags" that are marked by the < and > signs. The general format for a HTML tag is:

<tag_name>string of text</tag_name>

As an example, the title for this section uses a header tag:

<H3>What are HTML tags?</H3>

This tag tells a web browser to display the text What are HTML tags? in the style of header level 3. HTML tags may tell a web browser to bold the text, italicize it, make it into a header, or make it be a hypertext link to another web page. It is important to note that the ending tag, </tag_name> contains the "/" slash character. This "/" slash tells a web browser to stop tagging the text. Many HTML tags are paired this way.

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