Basic HTML Document: Hypertext Refers To The Way in Which Web Pages (HTML Documents) Are Linked

HTML
HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language, and it is the most widely used language to
write Web Pages.
• Hypertext refers to the way in which Web pages (HTML documents) are linked
together. Thus, the link available on a webpage is called Hypertext.
• As its name suggests, HTML is a Markup Language which means you use HTML to
simply "mark-up" a text document with tags that tell a Web browser how to structure
it to display.
Originally, HTML was developed with the intent of defining the structure of documents like
headings, paragraphs, lists, and so forth to facilitate the sharing of scientific information
between researchers.
Now, HTML is being widely used to format web pages with the help of different tags
available in HTML language.
Basic HTML Document
In its simplest form, following is an example of an HTML document:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>This is document title</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>This is a heading</h1>
<p>Document content goes here.....</p>
</body>
</html>
Either you can use Try it option available at the top right corner of the code box to check
the result of this HTML code, or let's save it in an HTML file test.htm using your favorite
text editor. Finally open it using a web browser like Internet Explorer or Google Chrome, or
Firefox etc. It must show the following output:
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HTML Tags
As told earlier, HTML is a markup language and makes use of various tags to format the
content. These tags are enclosed within angle braces <Tag Name>. Except few tags, most
of the tags have their corresponding closing tags. For example, <html> has its closing
tag</html> and <body> tag has its closing tag </body> tag etc.
Above example of HTML document uses the following tags:
Tag Description
<!DOCTYPE...> This tag defines the document type and HTML version.
<html> This tag encloses the complete HTML document and mainly
comprises of document header which is represented by
<head>...</head> and document body which is represented by
<body>...</body> tags.
<head> This tag represents the document's header which can keep other
HTML tags like <title>, <link> etc.
<title> The <title> tag is used inside the <head> tag to mention the
document title.
<body> This tag represents the document's body which keeps other HTML
tags like <h1>, <div>, <p> etc.
<h1> This tag represents the heading.
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<p> This tag represents a paragraph.
To learn HTML, you will need to study various tags and understand how they behave, while
formatting a textual document. Learning HTML is simple as users have to learn the usage of
different tags in order to format the text or images to make a beautiful webpage.
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommends to use lowercase tags starting from HTML
4.
HTML Document Structure
A typical HTML document will have the following structure:
Document declaration tag

<html>
<head>
Document header related tags
</head>
<body>
Document body related tags
</body>
</html>
We will study all the header and body tags in subsequent chapters, but for now let's see
what is document declaration tag.
The <!DOCTYPE> Declaration
The <!DOCTYPE> declaration tag is used by the web browser to understand the version of
the HTML used in the document. Current version of HTML is 5 and it makes use of the
following declaration:
<!DOCTYPE html>
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There are many other declaration types which can be used in HTML document depending on
what version of HTML is being used. We will see more details on this while discussing <!
DOCTYPE...> tag along with other HTML tags.
Heading Tags
Any document starts with a heading. You can use different sizes for your headings. HTML
also has six levels of headings, which use the elements <h1>, <h2>, <h3>, <h4>,
<h5>, and <h6>. While displaying any heading, browser adds one line before and one line
after that heading.
Example
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Heading Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>This is heading 1</h1>
<h5>This is heading 5</h5> <h6>This is heading 6</h6>
</body>
</html>
This will produce the following result:
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Paragraph Tag
The <p> tag offers a way to structure your text into different paragraphs. Each paragraph
of text should go in between an opening <p> and a closing </p> tag as shown below in the
example:
Example
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Paragraph Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>Here is a first paragraph of text.</p>
<p>Here is a second paragraph of text.</p>
<p>Here is a third paragraph of text.</p>
</body>
</html>
Here is a first paragraph of text.

Here is a second paragraph of text.
Here is a third paragraph of text.
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HTML
Line Break Tag
Whenever you use the <br /> element, anything following it starts from the next line. This
tag is an example of an empty element, where you do not need opening and closing tags, as
there is nothing to go in between them.
The <br /> tag has a space between the characters br and the forward slash. If you omit
this space, older browsers will have trouble rendering the line break, while if you miss the
forward slash character and just use <br> it is not valid in XHTML.
Example
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Line Break Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>Hello<br />
You delivered your assignment on time.<br />
Thanks<br />
Mahnaz</p>
</body>
</html>
Hello
You delivered your assignment on time.
Thanks
Mahnaz
Centering Content
You can use <center> tag to put any content in the center of the page or any table cell.
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Example
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Centring Content Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>This text is not in the center.</p>
<center>
<p>This text is in the center.</p>
</center>
</body>
</html>
This text is not in the center.
This text is in the center.
Horizontal Lines
Horizontal lines are used to visually break-up sections of a document. The <hr> tag creates
a line from the current position in the document to the right margin and breaks the line
accordingly.
For example, you may want to give a line between two paragraphs as in the given example
below:
Example
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Horizontal Line Example</title>
</head>
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HTML
<body>
<p>This is paragraph one and should be on top</p>
<hr />
<p>This is paragraph two and should be at bottom</p>
</body>
</html>
This is paragraph one and should be on top
This is paragraph two and should be at bottom
Again <hr /> tag is an example of the empty element, where you do not need opening and
closing tags, as there is nothing to go in between them.
The <hr /> element has a space between the characters hr and the forward slash. If you
omit this space, older browsers will have trouble rendering the horizontal line, while if you
miss the forward slash character and just use <hr> it is not valid in XHTML
Preserve Formatting
Sometimes, you want your text to follow the exact format of how it is written in the HTML
document. In these cases, you can use the preformatted tag <pre>.
Any text between the opening <pre> tag and the closing </pre> tag will preserve the
formatting of the source document.
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Example
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Preserve Formatting Example</title>
</head>
<body> <pre>
function testFunction( strText )
{ alert (strText)
}
</pre>
</body>
</html>
function testFunction( strText ){
alert (strText)
Try using the same code without keeping it inside <pre>...</pre> tags
Nonbreaking Spaces
Suppose you want to use the phrase "12 Angry Men." Here, you would not want a browser to
split the "12, Angry" and "Men" across two lines:
An example of this technique appears in the movie "12 Angry Men."
In cases, where you do not want the client browser to break text, you should use a
nonbreaking space entity instead of a normal space. For example, when coding the
"12 Angry Men" in a paragraph, you should use something similar to the following code:
Example
<!DOCTYPE html>
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HTML
<html>
<head>
<title>Nonbreaking Spaces Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>An example of this technique appears in the movie "12 Angry Men."</p>
</body>
</html>
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An HTML element is defined by a starting tag. If the element contains other content, it
ends with a closing tag, where the element name is preceded by a forward slash as shown
below with few tags:
Start Tag Content End Tag
<p> This is paragraph content. </p>
<h1> This is heading content. </h1>
<div> This is division content. </div>
<br />
So here <p>....</p> is an HTML element, <h1>...</h1> is another HTML element. There

are some HTML elements which don't need to be closed, such as <img.../>, <hr /> and
<br /> elements. These are known as void elements.
HTML documents consists of a tree of these elements and they specify how HTML
documents should be built, and what kind of content should be placed in what part of an
HTML document.
HTML Tag vs. Element
An HTML element is defined by a starting tag. If the element contains other content, it ends
with a closing tag.
For example, <p> is starting tag of a paragraph and </p> is closing tag of the same
paragraph but <p>This is paragraph</p> is a paragraph element.
Nested HTML Elements
It is very much allowed to keep one HTML element inside another HTML element:
Example
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
HTML
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<head>
<title>Nested Elements Example</title>

</head>
<body>
<h1>This is <i>italic</i> heading</h1>
<p>This is <u>underlined</u> paragraph</p>
</body>
</html>
This will display the following result:
This is italic heading

This is underlined paragraph
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We have seen few HTML tags and their usage like heading tags <h1>, <h2>, paragraph
tag <p> and other tags. We used them so far in their simplest form, but most of the HTML
tags can also have attributes, which are extra bits of information.
An attribute is used to define the characteristics of an HTML element and is placed inside the
element's opening tag. All attributes are made up of two parts: a name and a value:
• The name is the property you want to set. For example, the paragraph <p> element
in the example carries an attribute whose name is align, which you can use to
indicate the alignment of paragraph on the page.

• The value is what you want the value of the property to be set and always put within
quotations. The below example shows three possible values of align attribute: left,
center and right.
Attribute names and attribute values are case-insensitive. However, the World Wide Web
Consortium (W3C) recommends lowercase attributes/attribute values in their HTML 4
recommendation.
Example
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Align Attribute Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p align="left">This is left aligned</p>
<p align="center">This is center aligned</p>
<p align="right">This is right aligned</p>
</body>
</html>
This will display the following result:
This is left aligned

This is center aligned
This is right aligned
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HTML
Core Attributes
The four core attributes that can be used on the majority of HTML elements (although not
all) are:
• Id
• Title
• Class
• Style
The Id Attribute
The id attribute of an HTML tag can be used to uniquely identify any element within an
HTML page. There are two primary reasons that you might want to use an id attribute on an
element:
• If an element carries an id attribute as a unique identifier, it is possible to identify

just that element and its content.
• If you have two elements of the same name within a Web page (or style sheet), you
can use the id attribute to distinguish between elements that have the same name.
We will discuss style sheet in separate tutorial. For now, let's use the id attribute to
distinguish between two paragraph elements as shown below.
Example
<p id="html">This para explains what is HTML</p>
<p id="css">This para explains what is Cascading Style Sheet</p>
The title Attribute

The title attribute gives a suggested title for the element. They syntax for the title attribute
is similar as explained for id attribute:
The behavior of this attribute will depend upon the element that carries it, although it is
often displayed as a tooltip when cursor comes over the element or while the element is
loading.
Example
<!DOCTYPE html>
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<html>
<head>
15
HTML
<title>The title Attribute Example</title>

</head>
<body>
<h3 title="Hello HTML!">Titled Heading Tag Example</h3>
</body>
</html>
Titled Heading Tag Example

Now try to bring your cursor over "Titled Heading Tag Example" and you will see that
whatever title you used in your code is coming out as a tooltip of the cursor.
The class Attribute

The class attribute is used to associate an element with a style sheet, and specifies the
class of element. You will learn more about the use of the class attribute when you will learn
Cascading Style Sheet (CSS). So for now you can avoid it.
The value of the attribute may also be a space-separated list of class names. For example:
class="className1 className2 className3"
The style Attribute

The style attribute allows you to specify Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) rules within the
element.
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>The style Attribute</title>
</head>
<body>
<p style="font-family:arial; color:#FF0000;">Some text...</p>
</body>
</html>

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HTML
Some text...
At this point of time, we are not learning CSS, so just let's proceed without bothering much
about CSS. Here, you need to understand what are HTML attributes and how they can be
used while formatting content.
Internationalization Attributes
There are three internationalization attributes, which are available for most (although not
all) XHTML elements.
• dir
• lang 
xml:lang
The dir Attribute

The dir attribute allows you to indicate to the browser about the direction in which the text
should flow. The dir attribute can take one of two values, as you can see in the table that
follows:
Value Meaning
ltr Left to right (the default value)
rtl Right to left (for languages such as Hebrew or Arabic that are read right to
left)
Example
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html dir="rtl">
<head>
<title>Display Directions</title>
</head>
<body>
This is how IE 5 renders right-to-left directed text.
</body>
</html>
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HTML
This is how IE 5 renders right-to-left directed text.
When dir attribute is used within the <html> tag, it determines how text will be presented
within the entire document. When used within another tag, it controls the text's direction for
just the content of that tag.
The lang Attribute

The lang attribute allows you to indicate the main language used in a document, but this
attribute was kept in HTML only for backwards compatibility with earlier versions of HTML.
This attribute has been replaced by the xml:lang attribute in new XHTML documents.
The values of the lang attribute are ISO-639 standard two-character language codes.
Example
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<title>English Language Page</title>
</head>
<body>
This page is using English Language
</body>
</html>
The xml:lang Attribute
The xml:lang attribute is the XHTML replacement for the lang attribute. The value of
thexml:lang attribute should be an ISO-639 country code as mentioned in previous section.
Generic Attributes
Here's a table of some other attributes that are readily usable with many of the HTML tags.
Attribute Options Function
18
HTML
align right, left, center Horizontally aligns tags
valign top, middle, bottom Vertically aligns tags within an HTML

element.
bgcolor numeric, hexidecimal, RGB Places a background color behind an

values element
background URL Places a background image behind an

element
id User Defined Names an element for use with Cascading

Style Sheets.
class User Defined Classifies an element for use with

Cascading Style Sheets.
width Numeric Value Specifies the width of tables, images, or

table cells.
height Numeric Value Specifies the height of tables, images, or

table cells.
title User Defined "Pop-up" title of the elements.
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If you use a word processor, you must be familiar with the ability to make text bold,
italicized, or underlined; these are just three of the ten options available to indicate how
text can appear in HTML and XHTML.
Bold Text
Anything that appears within <b>...</b> element, is displayed in bold as shown below:
Example
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Bold Text Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>The following word uses a <b>bold</b> typeface.</p>
</body>
</html>
The following word uses a bold typeface.
Italic Text
Anything that appears within <i>...</i> element is displayed in italicized as shown below:
Example
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Italic Text Example</title>
</head>
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<body>
<p>The following word uses a <i>italicized</i> typeface.</p>
</body>
</html>
The following word uses an italicized typeface.
Underlined Text
Anything that appears within <u>...</u> element, is displayed with underline as shown
below:
Example
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Underlined Text Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>The following word uses a <u>underlined</u> typeface.</p>
</body>
</html>
The following word uses an underlined typeface.
Strike Text
Anything that appears within <strike>...</strike> element is displayed with

strikethrough, which is a thin line through the text as shown below:
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Example
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
34
<title>Strike Text Example</title>

</head>
<body>
<p>The following word uses a <strike>strikethrough</strike> typeface.</p>
</body>
</html>
The following word uses a strikethrough typeface.
Monospaced Font
The content of a <tt>...</tt> element is written in monospaced font. Most of the fonts are
known as variable-width fonts because different letters are of different widths (for example,
the letter 'm' is wider than the letter 'i'). In a monospaced font, however, each letter has
the same width.
Example
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Monospaced Font Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>The following word uses a <tt>monospaced</tt> typeface.</p>
</body>
</html>

The following word uses a monospaced typeface.
Superscript Text
The content of a <sup>...</sup> element is written in superscript; the font size used is
the same size as the characters surrounding it but is displayed half a character's height
above the other characters.
Example
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Superscript Text Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>The following word uses a <sup>superscript</sup> typeface.</p>
</body>
</html>
superscript
The following word uses a typeface.
Subscript Text
The content of a <sub>...</sub> element is written in subscript; the font size used is the
same as the characters surrounding it, but is displayed half a character's height beneath the
other characters.
Example
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Subscript Text Example</title>
</head>
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<body>
<p>The following word uses a <sub>subscript</sub> typeface.</p>
</body>
</html>
The following word uses a subscript typeface.
Inserted Text
Anything that appears within <ins>...</ins> element is displayed as inserted text.
Example
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Inserted Text Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>I want to drink <del>cola</del> <ins>Juice</ins></p>
</body>
</html>

I want to drink cola Juice
Deleted Text
Anything that appears within <del>...</del> element, is displayed as deleted text.
Example
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Deleted Text Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>I want to drink <del>cola</del> <ins>wine</ins></p>
</body>
</html>
Larger Text
The content of the <big>...</big> element is displayed one font size larger than the rest
of the text surrounding it as shown below:
Example
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Larger Text Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>The following word uses a <big>big</big> typeface.</p>
</body>
</html>
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The following word uses a big typeface.
Smaller Text
The content of the <small>...</small> element is displayed one font size smaller than the
rest of the text surrounding it as shown below:
Example
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Smaller Text Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>The following word uses a <small>small</small> typeface.</p>
</body>
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</html>
The following word uses a small typeface.
Grouping Content
The <div> and <span> elements allow you to group together several elements to create
sections or subsections of a page.
For example, you might want to put all of the footnotes on a page within a <div> element
to indicate that all of the elements within that <div> element relate to the footnotes. You
might then attach a style to this <div> element so that they appear using a special set of
style rules.
Example
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Div Tag Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<div id="menu" align="middle" >
<a href="/index.htm">HOME</a> |
<a href="/about/contact_us.htm">CONTACT</a> |
<a href="/about/index.htm">ABOUT</a>
</div>
<div id="content" align="left" bgcolor="white">

<h5>Content Articles</h5>
<p>Actual content goes here.....</p>
</div>
</body>
</html>
27
HTML
HTML
6. HTML– PHRASE TAGS
HOME | CONTACT | ABOUT
CONTENT ARTICLES
Actual content goes here.....
The <span> element, on the other hand, can be used to group inline elements only. So, if
you have a part of a sentence or paragraph which you want to group together, you could
use the <span> element as follows
Example
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Span Tag Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>This is the example of <span style="color:green">span tag</span> and the <span
style="color:red">div tag</span> alongwith CSS</p>
</body>
</html>
This is the example of span tag and the div tag along with CSS
These tags are commonly used with CSS to allow you to attach a style to a section of a
page.
<html>
<head>
<title>Emphasized Text Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>The following word uses a <em>emphasized</em> typeface.</p>
</body>
</html>
The following word uses an emphasized typeface.
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Marked Text
Anything that appears with-in <mark>...</mark> element, is displayed as marked with

yellow ink.
Example
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Marked Text Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>The following word has been <mark>marked</mark> with yellow</p>
</body>
</html>
The following word has been marked with yellow.
Strong Text
Anything that appears within <strong>...</strong> element is displayed as important

text.
Example
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Strong Text Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>The following word uses a <strong>strong</strong> typeface.</p>
</body>
29
HTML
</html>
The following word uses a strong typeface.
Text Abbreviation
You can abbreviate a text by putting it inside opening <abbr> and closing </abbr> tags. If
present, the title attribute must contain this full description and nothing else.
Example
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
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<title>Text Abbreviation</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>My best friend's name is <abbr title="Abhishek">Abhy</abbr>.</p>
</body>
</html>
My best friend's name is Abhy.
Acronym Element
The <acronym> element allows you to indicate that the text between <acronym> and
</acronym> tags is an acronym.
At present, the major browsers do not change the appearance of the content of the
<acronym> element.
Example
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Acronym Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>This chapter covers marking up text in <acronym>XHTML</acronym>.</p>
</body>
</html>
This chapter covers marking up text in XHTML.
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Text Direction
The <bdo>...</bdo> element stands for Bi-Directional Override and it is used to override
the current text direction.
Example
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Text Direction Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>This text will go left to right.</p>
<p><bdo dir="rtl">This text will go right to left.</bdo></p>
</body>
</html>
This text will go left to right. This
text will go right to left.
Special Terms
The <dfn>...</dfn> element (or HTML Definition Element) allows you to specify that you
are introducing a special term. It's usage is similar to italic words in the midst of a
paragraph.
Typically, you would use the <dfn> element the first time you introduce a key term. Most
recent browsers render the content of a <dfn> element in an italic font.
Example
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Special Terms Example</title>
</head>
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<body>
<p>The following word is a <dfn>special</dfn> term.</p>
</body>
</html>
The following word is a special term.
Quoting Text
When you want to quote a passage from another source, you should put it in
between<blockquote>...</blockquote> tags.
Text inside a <blockquote> element is usually indented from the left and right edges of the
surrounding text, and sometimes uses an italicized font.
Example
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Blockquote Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>The following description of XHTML is taken from the W3C Web site:</p>
<blockquote>XHTML 1.0 is the W3C's first Recommendation for XHTML, following on
from earlier work on HTML 4.01, HTML 4.0, HTML 3.2 and HTML 2.0.</blockquote>
</body>
</html>
The following description of XHTML is taken from the W3C Web site:
XHTML 1.0 is the W3C's first Recommendation for XHTML, following on from earlier
work on HTML 4.01, HTML 4.0, HTML 3.2 and HTML 2.0.
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Short Quotations
The <q>...</q> element is used when you want to add a double quote within a sentence.
Example
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Double Quote Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>Amit is in Spain, <q>I think I am wrong</q>.</p>
</body>
</html>
Amit is in Spain, I think I am wrong.
Text Citations
If you are quoting a text, you can indicate the source placing it between an opening
<cite>tag and closing </cite> tag
As you would expect in a print publication, the content of the <cite> element is rendered in
italicized text by default.
Example
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Citations Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>This HTML tutorial is derived from <cite>W3 Standard for HTML</cite>.</p>
</body>
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</html>
This HTML tutorial is derived from W3 Standard for HTML.
Keyboard Text
When you are talking about computers, if you want to tell a reader to enter some text, you
can use the <kbd>...</kbd> element to indicate what should be typed in, as in this
example.
Example
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Keyboard Text Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>Regular text. <kbd>This is inside kbd element</kbd> Regular text.</p>
</body>
</html>
Regular text. This is inside kbd element Regular text.
Programming Variables
This element is usually used in conjunction with the <pre> and <code> elements to
indicate that the content of that element is a variable.
Example
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
35
<title>Variable Text Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p><code>document.write("<var>user-name</var>")</code></p>
</body>
</html>

document.write("user-name")
Program Output
The <samp>...</samp> element indicates sample output from a program, and script etc.
Again, it is mainly used when documenting programming or coding concepts.
Example
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Program Output Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>Result produced by the program is <samp>Hello World!</samp></p>
</body>
</html>
Result produced by the program is Hello World!
Address Text
The <address>...</address> element is used to contain any address.
Example
<!DOCTYPE html>
36
<html>
<head>
<title>Address Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<address>388A, Road No 22, Jubilee Hills - Hyderabad</address>
</body>
</html>
388A, Road No 22, Jubilee Hills - Hyderabad
37
HTML lets you specify metadata - additional important information about a document in a
variety of ways. The META elements can be used to include name/value pairs describing
properties of the HTML document, such as author, expiry date, a list of keywords, document
author etc.
The <meta> tag is used to provide such additional information. This tag is an empty
element and so does not have a closing tag but it carries information within its attributes.
You can include one or more meta tags in your document based on what information you
want to keep in your document but in general, meta tags do not impact physical appearance
of the document so from appearance point of view, it does not matter if you include them or
not.
Adding Meta Tags to Your Documents
You can add metadata to your web pages by placing <meta> tags inside the header of the
document which is represented by <head> and </head> tags. A meta tag can have
following attributes in addition to core attributes:
Attribute Description
Name
Name for the property. Can be anything. Examples include, keywords,
description, author, revised, generator etc.
content Specifies the property's value.
scheme Specifies a scheme to interpret the property's value (as declared in the
content attribute).
httpequiv Used for http response message headers. For example, http-equiv can be
used to refresh the page or to set a cookie. Values include content-type,
expires, refresh and set-cookie.
Specifying Keywords
You can use <meta> tag to specify important keywords related to the document and later
these keywords are used by the search engines while indexing your webpage for searching
purpose.
38
HTML
Example
Following is an example, where we are adding HTML, Meta Tags, Metadata as important
keywords about the document.
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Meta Tags Example</title>
<meta name="keywords" content="HTML, Meta Tags, Metadata" />
</head>
<body>
<p>Hello HTML5!</p>
</body>
</html>
Hello HTML5!
Document Description
You can use <meta> tag to give a short description about the document. This again can be
used by various search engines while indexing your webpage for searching purpose.
Example
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta name="description" content="Learning about Meta Tags." />
</head>
<body>
<p>Hello HTML5!</p>
39
HTML
</body>
</html>
Document Revision Date
You can use <meta> tag to give information about when last time the document was
updated. This information can be used by various web browsers while refreshing your
webpage.
Example
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta name="revised" content="Tutorialspoint, 3/7/2014" />
</head>
<body>
<p>Hello HTML5!</p>
</body>
</html>
Document Refreshing
A <meta> tag can be used to specify a duration after which your web page will keep
refreshing automatically.
Example
If you want your page keep refreshing after every 5 seconds then use the following syntax.
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
40
HTML
<head>
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="5" />
</head>
<body>
<p>Hello HTML5!</p>
</body>
</html>
Page Redirection
You can use <meta> tag to redirect your page to any other webpage. You can also specify a
duration if you want to redirect the page after a certain number of seconds.
Example
Following is an example of redirecting current page to another page after 5 seconds. If you
want to redirect page immediately then do not specify content attribute.
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="5; url=http://www.tutorialspoint.com" />
</head>
<body>
<p>Hello HTML5!</p>
</body>
</html>
41

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HTML

Basic HTML Document

In its simplest form, following is an example of an HTML document:

Above example of HTML document uses the following tags:

<h1> This tag represents the heading.

HTML Document Structure

A typical HTML document will have the following structure:

Document declaration tag

The <!DOCTYPE> Declaration

This will produce the following result:

This will produce the following result:

Here is a first paragraph of text.

Line Break Tag

This will produce the following result:

This will produce the following result:

This text is not in the center.

This text is in the center.

This is paragraph one and should be on top

This is paragraph two and should be at bottom

This will produce the following result:

function testFunction( strText ){

An example of this technique appears in the movie "12 Angry Men."

Start Tag Content End Tag

<p> This is paragraph content. </p>

<h1> This is heading content. </h1>

<div> This is division content. </div>

So here <p>....</p> is an HTML element, <h1>...</h1> is another HTML element. There

HTML Tag vs. Element

Nested HTML Elements

<title>Nested Elements Example</title>

This will display the following result:

This is italic heading

This will display the following result:

This is left aligned

• If an element carries an id attribute as a unique identifier, it is possible to identify

The title Attribute

<title>The title Attribute Example</title>

This will produce the following result:

Titled Heading Tag Example

The class Attribute

class="className1 className2 className3"

The style Attribute

This will produce the following result:

The dir Attribute

ltr Left to right (the default value)

This will produce the following result:

This is how IE 5 renders right-to-left directed text.

The lang Attribute

The xml:lang Attribute

Attribute Options Function

align right, left, center Horizontally aligns tags

valign top, middle, bottom Vertically aligns tags within an HTML

bgcolor numeric, hexidecimal, RGB Places a background color behind an

background URL Places a background image behind an

id User Defined Names an element for use with Cascading

class User Defined Classifies an element for use with

width Numeric Value Specifies the width of tables, images, or

height Numeric Value Specifies the height of tables, images, or

title User Defined "Pop-up" title of the elements.