HTML: Syntax Basics

By Xah Lee. Date: 2009-09-29. Last updated: 2025-05-26.

Basic Structure

HTML is a very simple markup language.

Here's a example. Save the following text in a file, name it sample.html, then open the file in a browser.

<!doctype html>
<html>

 <head>
  <meta charset="utf-8" />
  <title>Sample HTML</title>
 </head>

 <body>
  <h1>Sample HTML</h1>
  <p>Earth is round</p>
 </body>

</html>

it shows in browser like this

HTML Syntax

Text are enclosed by tags. For example

<head>…</head> → contains meta info about the file.
<title>…</title> → gives the title of the file.
<body>…</body> → is content of the file.
<h1>…</h1> → is the header of the content.
<p>…</p> → is a paragraph.

Opening and Closing Tags

Each of the <name> is called a tag.

<name> is called opening tag.
</name> is called closing tag.

Self Closing Tags

Some tags do not require the closing tag.

HTML: List of Self-Closing Tags

Most Important Tags

Here is the most frequently used tags.

Headers tags

There are 6 of them.

<h1>…</h1>: First level heading
<h2>…</h2>: Second level heading
<h3>…</h3>: Third level heading
<h4>…</h4>: 4th level
<h5>…</h5>: 5th level
<h6>…</h6>: 6th level. There is no 7th.

Paragraph

<p>…</p>: Paragraph. Can contain multiple lines.

line-break

<br />: force a line-break. [see HTML: List of Self-Closing Tags]

Literal Text block

<pre>…</pre>: Literal text block. Can contain multiple lines. Usually used for Computer Code or poem.

Blockquote

<blockquote>…</blockquote>: block quote. Can contain multiple lines and other markups such as paragraph or list.

Unordered List

<ul>
<li>list item 1</li>
<li>list item 2</li>
</ul>

[see HTML: List: ul ol li]

Ordered List

<ol>
<li>ordered list item 1</li>
<li>ordered list item 2</li>
</ol>

Link

<a href="url">description</a>

Link to a website.

<a href="http://example.com/">http://example.com/</a>

Image

<img src="filepath" alt="description" />

embed image.

<img src="my_cat.jpg" alt="my cat" />

bold

<b>…</b>: bold

italics

<i>…</i>: italics

Literal Inline Code

<code>…</code>: literal inline text. usually used for computer code.

Generic Inline Text Markup

<span>…</span>: general markup for inline text. It is similar to the bold tag b but without any meaning.

Generic Block Markup

<div>…</div>: general markup for a block of text. It is similar to p. Usually used to group other elements inside.

Element's Attributes

Each element may have attributes.

The syntax for attributes are like this:

<p name=value>…</p>

<p name>…</p>

The one without the equal sign is called boolean attributes. They are rare.

What attributed are allowed for each elements depends on the element.

Most Important Attributes: class, id

Two most frequently used attributes, can be used on any element, are class and id attributes.

<p class="xyz">the class attribute allows a element to be identified by CSS and JavaScript.</p>

<p id="x34">the id attribute allows a element to be identified by CSS and JavaScript. ID value must be unique per HTML page.</p>

A element can have many attributes. For example, here's a inline image:

<p id="x34" class="xyz">I traveled around the world.</p>

The class and id attributes are used by Cascading Style Sheet and JavaScript to identify a element.

Case Sensitivity

HTML: Case Sensitivity

Versions of HTML

There are many versions of HTML and XHTML, and it is really a mess, after 3 decades of history.

If you are creating new pages, i recommend HTML5. Put the following line at the beginning of your file.

<!doctype html>

HTML: Doctype