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What is HTML?

HTML is a markup language for describing web documents (web pages).
HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language
A markup language is a set of markup tags
HTML documents are described by HTML tags
Each HTML tag describes different document content

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HTML Example

A small HTML document:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Page Title</title>
</head>
<body>

<h1>My First Heading</h1>
<p>My first paragraph.</p>

</body>
</html>

Try it yourself »

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Example Explained

• The DOCTYPE declaration defines the document type to be HTML 
• The text between <html> and </html> describes an HTML document 
• The text between <head> and </head> provides information about the document 
• The text between <title> and </title> provides a title for the document 
• The text between <body> and </body> describes the visible page content 
• The text between <h1> and </h1> describes a heading 
• The text between <p> and </p> describes a paragraphUsing this description, a web browser can display a document with a heading and a paragraph.

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HTML Tags

HTML tags are keywords (tag names) surrounded by angle brackets:

<tagname>content</tagname>
HTML tags normally come in pairs like <p> and </p>
The first tag in a pair is the start tag, the second tag is the end tag
The end tag is written like the start tag, but with a slash before the tag name

	The start tag is often called the opening tag. The end tag is often called the closing tag.