HTML
From Dharmasphere
HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is the language generally used for writing pages on the Internet. It is a simple way to format text and to combine it with images and other media, such as audio, video and animation.
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Hypertext
Hypertext means that the text can contain links (or hyperlinks) to other pages on the World Wide Web. Usually, if we read a book, we would start at the beginning and read through to the end. However, on the Web, we can easily flick from one web page to another by clicking on hyperlinks within the pages.
On the Web, a reader can click on a link on one website and end up somewhere completely different. So, the flow of reading is non-linear, that is, it is not a simple straight flow from start to finish.
Markup Language
Markup Language means that we can give some extra information about the words on the page. By marking up text, we can give a heirarchy to the different parts of the page and we can describe the meaning and function of the different words.
An example in the Real World is the use of a yellow highlighter pen on an essay or article. By highlighting important words and sentences, we effectively mark up the text and say, "this piece of text highlighted in yellow is important". Our essay then contains two types of text - text that is important (i.e. that highlighted in yellow) and text that is not so important (i.e. text that is not highlighted).
We may go further... by highlighting our essay in different colours, or underlining words, we can apply even more information and distinguish between different types of text.
A newspaper is an excellent example of text that has been marked up. Take a quick glance at the front page of a newspaper in any language and you'll easily be able to distinguish which is the main headline, which is a less important article, which is the newspaper's title, etc.
HTML Tags
In HTML, we mark up text by the use of HTML tags. These tags give some information about the text they are applied to. They allow us to give the web page more meaning than if it was just text on its own.
