HTML: An Elementary Introduction

HTML: An Elementary Introduction

HTML is the language of the Web. Hence Web Concordances are constructed in HTML.

If you are happy with the control over the layout of Web Concordances which the program provides, you should never need to use HTML directly. If you want to fine-tune things, you will need to know some HTML. A good HTML editor will make it much easier.

If you know no HTML at all at present, what follows may help you just enough to get started.

HTML Markup

An HTML document consists of text to be displayed, plus markup to control the way it is displayed.

The elements of HTML markup are called tags. HTML tags usually, but not always, come in pairs, an opening tag and a closing tag.

Tags are enclosed in the 'greater than' and 'less than' symbols, "<" ">"

The opening tag of a pair of tags looks like this: <TAG>.

The closing tag of a pair looks like this: </TAG>. Notice the slash.

Structure of an HTML document

The simplest HTML document looks something like this:

<HTML>
<Head>
<Title>Type the title of your page here</Title>
</Head>

<Body>

The main body of your page goes here

</Body>
</HTML>

Further tags are used to control the way the text in the body of the document is displayed. For example, if you type

This should be <B>emphasized</B> more than usual

the browser will display

This should be emphasized more than usual

There are many other constructs available in HTML, such as tables and lists. The most important element, however, is the link (or hyperlink). It is links which enable navigation in web pages.

A simple link looks like this:

<A href="destination">An interesting place</A>

The browser will show this link as An interesting place and if you click on it (in a browser), the browser will locate and load the thing described by "destination".

There are many books and websites which will let you learn more about HTML.

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