What Does HTML Stand For

We hear a lot about how web designers need to know a lot of languages like HTML, PHP etc. Very few people actually know what they are and fewer still know how to use them.

HTML Language

HTML, which is short for Hyper Text Markup Language, is one of the most common and simplest languages for writing on the web. Just like different people speak different languages, the Internet too has its own language. And with the help of the HTML language, we can upload data on the net the way we want.

What is the need for a different language? A computer is a machine and hence everything that we put in needs to be so precise that there should be no room for ambiguity. After all, the computer cannot come back with any doubts if something you told it to do was unclear right! Hence, there was a need to design a language which was precise enough and by which the computer knows exactly what is expected of it.

And hence experts decided that it is in the best interests of the people as well as the computers that a different language altogether, albeit fairly similar to English, be invented and taught to the computer so that once both-the people and the computer learn this language-there will be no misunderstandings and room for doubt in the 'mind' of the computer as to what it is supposed to do.

So to this end, the HTML and various other languages were created to enable the computer to understand exactly what we want it to do.

HTML Codes

Perhaps you're still confused as to what the computer could misunderstand. Let me take an example.

Suppose you are writing a piece on climate change in the world. Now you want the initial heading in your piece to be bold and underlined, while you may want the rest of the text un-formatted. How would you tell this to the computer which part to make bold and underlined and which part to stay un-formatted? Because if you write 'bold' in English, the computer might assume that it is part of the text. Hence the way out is to create a language where the computer will know what to do. Hence, starting the sentence 'Climate Change in the World' with the bold and underline tag will tell the computer that this part of the text is supposed to be bold and underlined. At the same time, the HTML will also have a closing tag to tell the computer that no more text needs to be bold or underlined. Hence most HTML commands have both an opening tag and a closing tag. So which are the most common HTML website design codes?

• <b></b>: To make the text bold
• <i></i>: To make the text italic
• <u></u>: To underline the text
• <ul></ul>: To create a bulleted list
• <ol></ol>: To create a numbered list
• <li></li>: To go to the next number-bullet in the bulleted list
• <strong></strong>: To make text look bigger
• <font size=""></font>: To change the font size

HTML is one of the most simplest and basic computer languages. It is good for creating simple pages without too much formatting. For more complex pages with more formatting, you might need to learn more languages!