Whether you are using Blogger.com or WordPress — some HTML knowledge is really useful to have.

What is HTML?

Simply, it’s the language that your web browser speaks which tells it how to format your text. It’s what makes a bold word look bold. It’s what makes an italicized word look italicized.

Why do I need to know some HTML?

Although WordPress and Blogger have decent wysiwyg (what you see is what you get) editing environments that shield you from some of the underlying HTML code, there are limitations - tables are a good example. We’ll talk about tables later on.

Do I have to learn HTML to operate a blog?

By all means, No. However, learning some HTML will allow you to understand why text on the screen looks the way it does. And it will give you the ability to add additional functionality should you desire to.

The Concepts

We must start with a couple of high-level concepts to give you the give you the mental framework to which to attach some of the detail. HTML is basically a combination of "Text" and "Tags". The text is the information that you supply — it’s the content that your visitor reads. The tags are instructions on how your browser formats your text. Before we go into what the tags are and how they function, specifically, let’s examine what a tag looks like.

Tags

Tags surround the text, like bookends.

For example, if I want to make some text bold, I can do it like this:  Notice the bookends: These are tags. Notice the difference between the beginning tag and the ending tag. The ending tag has a ‘/’ wedged in just after the ‘<’. Whatever is wedged between the beginning tag and the ending tag will receive the effect of the tag.

In summary:

• HTML is comprised of "Text" and "Tags"
• Tags format your text
• Tags are comprised of a ‘beginning tag’ and an ‘ending tag’.
• Any data sandwiched between the beginning and ending tag will be affected by the tag

In the next lesson, we will explore "Heading" tags. Until Then…