RetroNET's Rough Guide to HTML

Text Mark-up Tags

Okay, so now we can talk about tarting-up your text...

Probably the first thing you should come to terms with is how little control you actually have over how your page will display. HTML is a way of presenting information in a semi-standardized way, not a graphic design tool... if you can wrap your head around that you'll be okay.

For example, let's look at our old friend the <B>bold</B> tag... as I've already mentioned, some systems lack bold fonts and may display bolded text as inverse – or may not even recognize the tag – so it's best not to rely on mark-up tags to impart meaning. Start with a well-written document and use HTML to enhance it. The following examples show the most common and most useful tags (examples are indented for clarity):

Paragraph <P></P>
Oddly enough, text placed withing the paragraph tag is treated as a paragraph... in most browsers this equates to blank line being placed before and aft, like so:

Blah blah blah blah paragraph, blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah paragraph, blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah paragraph, blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah paragraph, blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah paragraph, blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah paragraph, blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah paragraph, blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah paragraph, blah blah blah.

Break <BR>
Used to denote a line break within a paragraph or unformatted text, as so:

Let's have a break:
Okay, now get back to work!

No closing tag is necessary, because that would just be pointless.

Preformatted Text <PRE></PRE>
Text enclosed in PRE tags is displayed as typed and in a fixed-width font, so things like line breaks and multiple spaces are preserved. Especially useful for ascii art and diagrams.

      _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ 
     | __  |   __|_   _| __  |     |
     |    -|   __| | | |    -|  |  |
     |__|__|_____| |_| |__|__|_____|
      _____ _____ _____   _________ 
     |   | |   __|_   _| /  n___n  \
     | | | |   __| | |   ==/ (o) \==
     |_|___|_____| |_|    |_______| 

Nifty, huh? Be warned, however... anything that looks like html is likely to be interpreted as such, so it's best to avoid angle brackets ("<>") and ampersands ("&") in your preformatted text.

Teletype <TT></TT>
Teletype tags force the browser to display in a fixed-width font, but unlike <PRE></PRE>, it allows the use of other formatting tags.

Blah blah blah blah teletype, blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah teletype, blah blah blah.

Headings <Hn></Hn>
The heading tag, oddly enough, is used to denote headings... a smaller value in n yield a headier heading, as so:

This is an <H1></H1> heading

This is an <H2></H2> heading

This is an <H3></H3> heading

and so forth...

Well that's the basics... enough to get started with at least. A more comprehensive list can be found at http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/index/elements.html, but don't bother with it, it's far too much reading for now!

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