What is "html"

HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) is the main markup language (similar to ) for the creation of web pages and other information to be displayed in a web browser. It was invented by Tim Berners-Lee while at CERN to allow researchers to share their findings.

HTML elements form the building blocks of all sites. HTML allows images and objects to be embedded and can be used to create interactive shapes. It provides a means to create structured documents denoting structural semantics for the text, such as titles, paragraphs, lists, links, citations and other items. It can insert scripts written in languages such as Javascript, which affect the behavior of HTML web pages.

Syntax

HTML is written in the form of HTML elements consisting of tags between angular brackets (such as <html>), within the content of the website. Angular brackets are also referred to guillemets or chevrons as left and right.

HTML tags most commonly come in pairs like <h1> and </h1>, although some brands, known as empty elements, are unmatched, for example <img>. The first tag in a pair is the start tag, the second tag is the final tag (they are also called opening and closing tags). Among these tags authors can add text, other tags, comments and other types of text-based content.

The purpose of a browser is to read HTML documents and compose them into visible or audible web pages. The browser does not display the HTML tags, but uses the tags to interpret the page content.

Standards

HTML standards, as well as those for many other web technologies, are maintained by World Wide Web Consortium.

HTML 4 was introduced in 1997, and the latest iteration, HTML 5 was recently developed by W3C. What W3C calls HTML5 is a subset of HTML living standard, which is specified by Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG).

HTML5 language specifications and standards are available online here.

Note: When asking questions about HTML, it is better to provide a demo of your code if possible in the tag:jsfiddle or tag:jsbin, to give an interactive example of your problem.

References

Free HTML Books