What is HTML?

What is HTML?

HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language. That's a big name for a simple idea.

Imagine a house. Before you paint the walls (that's CSS) or turn on the lights (that's JavaScript), you need the bones of the house. HTML is the bones: it builds the structure of a web page.

Three best friends

Every website is made of three things:

1. HTML: the skeleton (structure)
2. CSS: the paint and clothes (looks)
3. JavaScript: the brain (behavior)

What does "markup" mean?

"Markup" just means special labels we put around text to tell the browser what each part is.

Think of it like a chef's ticket at a restaurant:

• "This part is the title"
• "This part is a paragraph"
• "This part is a picture"

What does "hypertext" mean?

"Hypertext" means text that can jump you somewhere else: that's what links do. When you click a link on one page and it takes you to another page, you're using hypertext!

Tags and elements

HTML uses tags: words wrapped in angle brackets like this:

<p>Hello!</p>

A tag usually comes in a pair:

• An opening tag: <p>
• A closing tag: </p> (note the slash!)

The opening tag, the content, and the closing tag together are called an element.

Tags are case-insensitive

Browsers treat <P>, <p>, and <p> the same. But everyone agrees you should write tags in lowercase. It keeps things neat!

TL;DR

• HTML builds the structure of web pages.
• Tags look like <tag> ... </tag>.
• An element = opening tag + content + closing tag.
• Write tags in lowercase.