HTML

HTML or HyperText Markup Language is a markup language, that is, a language that helps understanding the role of different parts of a document (its syntax).

HTML is used for the benefit of both the user and the computer (browsers and search engines). For users, HTML helps ensuring that all the essential parts of the text, e.g. paragraphs, headings, tables, lists etc., are displayed in a uniform and understandable fashion. For browsers and search engines, it helps understanding which part of a text is which - remember that computers are not humans and are generally unable to recognize the rolse of elements based solely on their appearance.

We, humans, are able, for example, to see the differences between the appearances of a heading and a paragraph, and these discrepancies may come in a variety of forms - shape, font, size, placement etc. For a computer to be able to understand it as well, it would mean teaching all the possible combinations of these differences for all the possible elements of a text, which, given the state of modern technology, is of course impossible. And here is when HTML comes into play.

The basic working principle of HTML is based on the so-called HTML tags. An HTML tag is a word or a letter that symbolizes a certain part of a text - a paragraph, a heading, a cell of table etc. Tags are enclosed in singe guillemets, commonly known as triangular brackets: < and >. A lot of tags also have an opening and a closing tag, where the opening tag is written as usual, and the closing one has a slash sign, like this: <this is a tag>some part of a text</this is a tag>.

When placed around a part of a text as in the example shown above, the tag indicates that the part of the text plays a certain role. Thus, for example, the <p> tag indicates, that the text within <p></p> is a paragraph. As it has already been mentioned, this helps browsers and search engines understand, how to interpret and display these part in a way understandable for a user.