HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language. It’s a simple programming language that tells your internet browser how to read your text and display it. For example, if you’d like to make something bold and you are coding your HTML by hand you would type
<strong>make this bold</strong>
and you would see
make this bold
in your browser.
The opening tag, <strong>, tells the browser that everything after that tag should be bold. The ending tag, </strong>, tells the browser to stop reading the bold and everything after that tag should be normal. It’s the / that tells the browser a command is ending. It is also necessary for the command to be enclosed in < >.
Some of the most common HTML for blog posts are
bold: <strong> </strong>
italics: <em> </em>
underline: <u> </u>
strike through: <del> </del>link: <a href=”title_of_file_to_show/”> </a>
It’s important to note that if you type HTML code into your Compose Post (or WYSIWYG) tab, the code will be treated as regular text and the HTML will not be read because the Compose Post/WYSIWYG tab assumes you want your readers to see what you’re typing. (Remember, WYSIWYG means What You See Is What You Get.)
If you want your HTML to be read by the browser, switch to the Edit HTML tab and enter your HTML. I encourage you to play around with this. Hands-on experimentation with a test post is the best way to learn this.
HTML is not hard to learn and will only enhance your blogging experience. It will allow you to be more confident in personalizing your site and figuring out how to solve any problems that arise with your code.
W3 Schools provides tutorials for basic HTML and XHTML (which is just a stricter, cleaner version of HTML):
- W3 Schools: HTML Tutorial
- W3 Schools: XHTML Tutorial