HTML commands are called tags, and browsers recognize them by the pointy brackets (these: < >) on either side of them. Most tags affect the text between them. For example, if you want to make a word appear in boldface, the HTML code looks like this:

<b>Hi!</b>

A browser would show this:

Hi!

The / in the ending tag tells the browser that the influence of the first tag ends there. Some tags (like the one which allows you to put pictures on your pages) do not have ending tags.

You'll find that most tags are fairly easy to remember, because they are abbreviations for what they do. For example, the tab for bold text you saw above is <b>. The b between the brackets stands for "bold." Here are some other tags; see if you can figure out the connection between the tag and what it does.

<p>	begin paragraph
</p>	end paragraph
<i>	italic (italic text looks like this)
<u>	underline (underlined text looks like this)
<img src=pawprint.gif>	this is the tag you use to identify an image source. It tells the browser to put an image there, and where to get it from. This example accesses pawprint.gif, which looks like this: .

You have now completed The Basics, and are ready to move on to Intermediate, where you'll build your site! Follow the link below to the next lesson.