HTML Formatting

You may be familiar with some of the formatting options that are available in word processing applications such as Microsoft Office, and desktop publishing software such as QuarkXpress. Well, many of these formatting features are available in HTML too! This lesson contains some of the more common formatting options.

Headings

There is a special tag for specifying headings in HTML. There are 6 levels of headings in HTML ranging from h1 for the most important, to h6 for the least important.

Typing this code:

<h1>Heading 1</h1>
<h2>Heading 2</h2>
<h3>Heading 3</h3>
<h4>Heading 4</h4>
<h5>Heading 5</h5>
<h6>Heading 6</h6>

Results in this:

Heading 1

Heading 2

Heading 3

Heading 4

Heading 5

Heading 6

Bold

You specify bold text with the <b> tag.

Typing this code:

<b>This text is bold.</b>

Results in this:

This text is bold.

Italics

You specify italic text with the <i> tag.

Typing this code:

<i>This text is italicised.</i>

Results in this:

This text is italicised.

Line Breaks

Typing this code:

<p>Here is a...<br />line break.</p>

Results in this:

Here is a
line break.

Horizontal Rule

Typing this code:

Here's a horizontal rule... <hr /> ...that was a horizontal rule :)

Results in this:

Here's a horizontal rule...

---

...that was a horizontal rule :)

Unordered (un-numbered) List

Typing this code:

<ul>
   <li>List item 1</li>
   <li>List item 2</li>
   <li>List item 3</li>
</ul>

Results in this:

• List item 1


• List item 2


• List item 3

Ordered (numbered) List

Note, that the only difference between an ordered list and an unordered list is the first letter of the list definition ("o" for ordered, "u" for unordered).

Typing this code:

<ol>
   <li>List item 1</li>
   <li>List item 2</li>
   <li>List item 3</li>
</ol>

Results in this:

1. List item 1


2. List item 2


3. List item 3