It helps to know a few basic html tags...so here's some of the basics, courtesy of the NCSA.

This guide was created at NCSA, a unit of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Copyright 1997 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. You can find and download their whole HTML Primer at http://archive.ncsa.uiuc.edu/General/Internet/WWW/index.html

Tags Explained

An element is a fundamental component of the structure of a text document. Some examples of elements are heads, tables, paragraphs, and lists. Think of it this way: you use HTML tags to mark the elements of a file for your browser. Elements can contain plain text, other elements, or both.

To denote the various elements in an HTML document, you use tags. HTML tags consist of a left angle bracket ( < ) a tag name, and a right angle bracket ( > ). Tags are usually paired (e.g., <H1> and </H1> ) to start and end the tag instruction. The end tag looks just like the start tag except a slash (/) precedes the text within the brackets.

NOTE: HTML is not case sensitive. <title> is equivalent to <TITLE> or <TiTlE> .

Not all tags are supported by all World Wide Web browsers. If a browser does not support a tag, it will simply ignore it. Any text placed between a pair of unknown tags will still be displayed, however.

Character Formatting

You can also use html tags to format your text--here's how:

To separate paragraphs: Put the following "tag" between the paragraphs

to create boldface titles, put <b> before the words you want in boldface and </b> at the end of the words you want in bold.
It will look like this:
THESE ARE THE WORDS THAT WILL BE BOLDED

If you want italics, the principle is the same--just use <i> and </i>:
THESE WORDS WILL BE ITALICIZED

Linking

The chief power of HTML comes from its ability to link text and/or an image to another document or section of a document. A browser highlights the identified text or image with color and/or underlines to indicate that it is a hypertext link (often shortened to hyperlink or just link).

HTML's single hypertext-related tag is <A>, which stands for anchor. To include an anchor in your document:

1. start the anchor with <A (include a space after the A)
2. specify the document you're linking to by entering the parameter HREF="filename" followed by a closing right angle bracket ( > )
3. enter the text (like "click here") that will serve as the hypertext link in the current document
4. enter the ending anchor tag: </A> (no space is needed before the end anchor tag)

To include a link to a webpage, use the the webpage's url for the "filename" above...for example, to put a link to the HTML Primer in your document, enter:
<A HREF="http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/General/Internet/WWW/HTMLPrimer.html"> NCSA's Beginner's Guide to HTML</A>
and you'll get this:
NCSA's Beginner's Guide to HTML

Notice that the text NCSA's Beginner's Guide to HTML above is now a "clickable" hyperlink.

These are just the very basics. Once you get started, you really will want to do more...so check the primer, and give it a try. And start using the "view source" command on your browser to see how web pages are really written.