HTML Overview

HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is an international standard for creating inter-linking, structured, documents. Lets look at each of the parts of the phrase:

HyperText is a text document that has links, or references, to other documents. These links can, usully, be followed to their destinations by a mouse click or keyboard command.

Markup is a method for annotating text. Depending on the context, documents are "marked up" to denote semantics, relationships, structure, attributes, errors, revisions, etc.

Language is a set of conventions for communication.

In HTML, we markup our documents with specific tags. HTML tags have a specific form, or syntax. To begin, we start with an opening tag, surrounded in less than/greater than brackets:

<tag>

Next we have content inside the tag and close the tag with a '/' character as such:

</tag>

So, if we were giving an inline citation, we would markup our document as follows:

<cite>I like beans!</cite>

In this task, we will take a wide angle view of HTML. We will look at the purpose HTML serves, the structure of HTML markup, a bit more history, and touch base with the importance of web standards.

We will look at specific HTML elements, including:

Paragraphs
Headers
Emphasis
Bold
Body

HTML tags will be given, such as <html>, along with a short description and examples of common use.

Learning Materials

Assignment

Modify the markup from the Wikiversity reading "What is HTML?" to include elements such as <h1> and <em>.

Q: What are your thoughts on the usage of these tags and how they affect our perception of information. E.g. how do they help us find meaning and relevance in a document?

Q: What are some common uses of the HTML markup elements explored in this task?