HTML:Hypertext Markup Language

In its most general sense a markup language is a grammar that defines the codes used to impose structure and layout on a text document. While this definition does apply to HTML, it is not strictly valid since a well designed web page should always separate presentational aspects by using CSS. This rules out the use of HTML markup for layout purposes. With this constraint in place, HTML is a markup langauge used to define the semantics of a web page by imposing a structure on it. Strict compliance with this definition would mean that one would never use HTML tags such as <b>, <br> etc. However, using such tags - styled using CSS where appropriate - results in more compact web pages. The links below offer a brief introduction to HTML and explain the more commonly used tags in some detail.