I love HTML. I can make my web pages look great with not a lot of coding. It’s still the best thing you can use that is able to be viewed by the vast majority of web users. The beauty of HTML is in the ease of its formatting tags. Thanks, Tim Berners-Lee and the creators of SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language) for being logical.

The thing that I’m still amazed at the more I develop web pages and the more I read other people’s web pages is how many people don’t know the basic formatting tags. Many people rely on HTML editors to do the work for them. I must admit that I’m not a complete purist. I do use an HTML editor on many occasions; but, that’s not because I can’t code in HTML – it’s because I don’t feel like it that day or my design is too complex and the HTML coding would be way too tedious – like if I were setting up tables within tables or something like that.

Here’s a list of some basic but perfect formatting tags that you can – and should use – over and over again to make your content sing.

*<p></p> - The Paragraph tag starts and closes a paragraph. It automatically starts a new line before and after so there’s not need to use the <BR> (line break) afterwards.

*<i></i> - Italics can work for quotes, especially long ones. They help to enhance or emphasize something without being too strong. Use these over the <em></em> Emphasis tag since browsers may display the text differently. If you want ITALICS, use the “I”.

*<b></b> - Bold is great for book titles (Despite what your English teacher may have told you). It also can allow special text like titles and headlines to be punchier. Do not use <STRONG></STRONG> as some may suggest as, just like with the “Emphasis” tag, some browsers won’t display it properly.

*<h1>…</h6> - Header tags should be used for headlines and to highlight sections of text and so forth. They’re very helpful visually to your reader so that he/she can distinguish between what’s important and what he/she can skim over. (Hey, all internet readers do it sometimes!)

The numeral, of course, refers to the size that the text will take, with “1” being the biggest and “6” the smallest.

There are, of course, many more tags that you can and should use. These; however, are among the simplest – and most straight-forward – to code. You’ll use them over and over again in standard documents and for content-writing; so, you may as well become familiar with them.