Text formatting

The first thing we will learn is how to bold, italicize, and create bold italicized text.

Originally, all you had to do is type this: <b>bold</b>, <i>italicize</i>, and <b><i>bold italicized</i></b>.

The preferred markup today is this: <strong>bold</strong>, <em>italicize</em> and <strong><em>bold italicized</em></strong>

Paragraphs

Next we will learn how to make paragraphs. When you need a block of text to begin on its own line with an empty line between it and the block of text above it, you simply use the <p></p> paragraph tag pair. Anything that falls within the <p></p> is treated by the browser as a self contained block of text. You can see examples of this on every page of this site.

Break tag

If you want to insert an enter or return (or for those of you who remember typewriters, a carriage return) into a Web page but you do not want any extra spaces between the lines, such as in an address, you would use the <br /> tag. This tag produces the effect below:

Name
Address
City, State, Zip

and is written like so:

Name<br />
Address<br />
City, State, Zip

Non-breaking spaces

If you just want a space in your text similar to what you get when you press the space bar on your keyboard, you simply use the non-breaking space character. It looks like this: &nbsp;

Yes it is that easy.