Text formatting, while extremely easy, is an incredibly important part of web design. Far too often, do I see websites that are truly difficult to understand or use, because they just don't use the proper text formatting.

To better help you understand how to use text formatting, I think it is important that we discuss what text formating is. Text formatting is a means of guiding your visitors eyes through your web site by making your blocks of text more readable. There is a great number of ways in order to do this, but in reality, you really only need to know about a few of these methods in order to truly give your pages a sparkle.

Below I have detailed the different coding types. Because HTML formatting is not allowed on Helium, keep in mind that there should be open < > and < /> close brackets around each of these HTML tags in order to make them complete.

b - When combined with an open and close tag, this will allow you to bold a letter, word or sentence. Just put an open tag where you want it to start and a close tag where you want it to end. This is best used on headers and sub headers.

i - This is used when you want to italicize something. Again use an open tag where you want it to start and a close tag where you want it to end. This is best for use on quotes.

u - This is an underline tag. This helps you to underline key information. Make sure that you don't underline more than one line at a time. This will make it difficult to read. Again, use open and close tags to start and stop.

pr - This is a paragraph command. It will format a block of text as a paragraph. Can be useful in shaping your page. Make sure that you open and close it.

br - This is a line break. This is one of the more important methods of formatting text, because it is used to created spaces between paragraphs. Without this, your page will become a massive text jumble. With this, you just need an open tag, there is no closing tag, just place it where you want the break to be.

font - This becomes much more difficult. If you want to change the font color, then you would simply use FONT COLOR=RED and the font color would be red. Make sure that you use an open tag on the FONT COLOR=RED and a close tag using FONT only. You place this around the text that you would want to be red. You can change the RED variable to any color that you want. If you want to find more color options, just do a search online and you should be able to find hundreds of possible colors.

There are numerous other formatting options for text available, but these are the most important ones and will give you a great starting point for working on your website.

While it is important that you are utilizing the methods above to format your text, it is also equally important that you don't over format your text. There is a such a thing as using too much text formatting on your website, which could cause a negative look as well. This means that you are changing the colors too often, using too much bold, too much italics, or just underlining far too much. Use these methods sparingly to only do what needs to be done and nothing more. The more you use, the more the meaning of the formatting is lost and the more likely it is that your visitors will leave the site without even giving it a chance. So, make sure that you are using proper formatting, and doing it on a 'need only' basis and you should be able to create great looking websites, that your visitors will truly love and come back to.

Learn more about this author, Clacky McSnackins.
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