HTML relies
on a system of tags to instruct it on what to do. Tags are letters/words/code
inside of less than and greater than signs < > that the language will
recognize as instructions. Tags tell computers when to begin to do something
and when to end, much like capital letters begin a sentence and a period ends
one (always have an opening and
closing tag). An opening tag will only have the signs and the code, like this: <i>. Closing tags include a slash / just inside the less than sign, like
this: </i>.
. You can also use more than one tag at a time, but tags must nest inside one another like
matroshka dolls.
Word Processor
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HTML Tags
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I’m disgusted by the jar of pickled pigs’ feet.
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I’m disgusted by the jar of pickled <i>pigs’
feet.</i>
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I’m disgusted by the jar of pickled pigs’ feet.
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I’m disgusted by the jar of pickled <b><i>pigs’ feet.</i></b>
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For the
most part, don’t worry too much about this. Most blogging sites have their own
editors, and will check to see if you have the HTML tags, but you don’t need to
interact with the HTML side much. You can just use the text editor. Better
still, we can use a WYSIWYG editor to create our HTML. We’ll get to that in a
couple of weeks.