by Silva Payne

Created on: July 11, 2010

Have you ever marvelled at the layout of a web page with all the lists, bullet points, tables and fancy coloured text? If you are wondering how to get your web pages to look as good, then you need to learn the basics of HTML coding.

HTML, or Hyper Text Mark-up Language to give it its full name, is a system of short phrases (known as “tags”) that computers recognise as commands. These phrases are placed at the beginning and end of portions text, to affect the display on your screen. For beginners, it can seem impossible to remember all the HTML in use, but the secret is to keep it simple and take it one step at a time.

Most basic HTML coding consists of single letters enclosed by a greater than (“>) or less than (“<”) symbol. The other common symbol used in HTML is the forward slash “/” which is used to end a command. You can use upper or lower case letters for the commands, but stick to one or the other throughout your web page.

Let's start by using HTML to make some text appear in bold type. This is commonly used for headings and for emphasis in text. The HTML command for creating bold text is: <b>. You need to place this command directly in front of any text that you want to appear in bold.

At the end of the text that is to be displayed in bold, you now need to close the command. To do this, type: < /b> (but without the space between the “<” and the “/”). Every time you begin a command in your piece of text, you must remember to close it again to make the command work.

This simple HTML can be used to create italic text by substituting the “b” for an “i” and formatting the code phrases in the same way as for the bold text command. You can also create lists by using “l” instead of “b”. These three commands are some of the most used in general web page design.

To add a change of font, or the text style that you are using, you will need to use the name of the font and the point number of the size of the text you want to create. For example, to set your text in Helvetica font you will need to open the command with <font face=“Helvetica”>. You can use any font name you like, but some computers will not recognise fancy or individual fonts and will revert to a known font. To close the command, simply type: < /font> (again without the space between the “<” and the “/”).

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