HTML Basics

Contents

What is HTML?
Basic Layout
Your first HTML document
Text formatting tags
Color and Style
Adding Images
Creating links
Tables
Forms
Lists
Putting your page on the Internet
HTML Links

Special Characters

Special characters are symbols that may not be included on your keyboard such as "¢" and symbols that are reserved for HTML use such as "<" and ">". HTML contains special markup for displaying these symbols in your document. This markup begins with an ampersand(&) and ends with a semi-colon (;).

This makes more sense with an example. Suppose you want to show in your document the proper syntax of the HTML IMG tag.

<img src="filename" width="" height= "" align="" border= "" alt = "">
If you just put the above tag syntax as-is in your document, the browser will try to interpret it as HTML and will display the default picture for a missing image. This is because the "<" and ">" symbols are interpreted as the start and end of an HTML tag.

Instead, use the HTML markup for these special characters, &lt; for "<" and &gt; for ">". Now you can show the the proper syntax by using...

&lt;img src="filename" width="" height= "" align="" border= "" alt = ""&gt;
There are many more special characters that have this markup. Below is a list of those that are commonly used.

SymbolMarkup
"&quot;
&&amp;
<&lt;
>&gt;
blank space&nbsp;
¢&cent;
©&copy;
®&reg;
½&frac12;
¼&frac14;
¾&frac34;
&lsquo;
&rsquo;
&ldquo;
&rdquo;

As an exercise, try reproducing the table above.

Next >>