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Now remember web pages contain paragraphs that are displayed by using the <p> tag to organize the text. The <p> tag also requires a closing tag </p>.

Now I will show you some of the basic style tags that you can use with your text which include the tags <u>, <big>, <small>, <sub>, <sup>, <tt> and <blink> which all require an end tag. One important thing to remember is that you should use CSS to add style to your text.

Now I’m going to show you the bold <b> and italic <i> tags which are a great way to make your text stand out. The <b> tag basically boldfaces a character or text within the <b> tag this tag also requires an end tag. If there is no boldface text available the browser will use some other kind of method.

Before I continue the <center> tag is now deprecated in favor of CSS style sheets text-align: center;, but it is still very well supported by most browsers.

Now in this tutorial I will show you how to add large quotations of text as well as how to use the old <blockquote> tag hack to indent your text. If you want your text to be indented farther just add another <blockquote> tag but remember to include the end tag as well.

Now let me show you the <p> tags align attribute which is know deprecated, which basically means that the align attribute is going to be made invalid or obsolete in future versions of HTML, in favor of CSS style sheets text-align property which you should use in place of the align attribute to align your text.

Now there are six heading tags to choose from that range from <h1> to <h6>. The heading tags will make your text bold as well as larger. The <h1> tag is the largest heading and <h6> is the smallest heading. It’s up to the browsers to decide the default font and weight along with other things unless you specifically specify the font and weight with CSS. All the tags require an end tag and if you forget to add the ending tag it can result in unfortunate results for your web page.

Now let’s talk about the <font> tag and its size attribute. The size attribute is used to increase or decrease the text. Before we start I should mention that the <font> tag and its attributes are now deprecated in HTML 4.01 and is not supported at all in XHTML 1.0 Strict DTD, which basically means that the <font> tag is going to be made invalid or obsolete in future versions of HTML in favor of CSS. But I will explain about the <font> tag and its size attribute any way.

Now what if you need to insert a line break to your web pages, for instance to song lyrics, poems, addresses and so on. This is where the <br> tag comes in. When used the <br> tag will simply cause text to start a new line.

If you don’t want your lines of text broken up to another line use the <nobr> tag which will cause the enclosed text to appear unbroken on a single line, even if there is white space from entering carriage returns. The <nobr> tag stands for no break. The <nobr> tag is an alternative to the <pre> tag. <nobr> tag requires an end tag. The <nobr> tag is an extension to the HTML language and is not part of the HTML standards.

Normally browsers will ignore multiple spaces, line breaks and so on that are done without special markup or without HTML and XHTML tags. But the <pre> tag will do the opposite it will display lines of text exactly as they are typed in. Which means line breaks and multiple spacing is honored. The <pre> tag requires an end tag. All text within the <pre> tag is usually displayed with a mono spaced font like Courier.

The <q> tag is used for short quotes that are within your web page for example content that is inline level. And the <blockquote> tag is intended for longer quotes that are block level. You can learn more about the <blockquote> tag in the “How To Add Large Quotations of Text With HTML & XHTML” tutorial.

Now there may be times when you want to separate certain blocks of text and define it as an address or any other contact information. To do this we need to use the <address> tag. A browser might format the text contained between the <address> tag in a different way then the rest of the documents text or use the text in some kind of special way. The <address> tag is usually formatted in an italic font type with a line break.

Now the phrase tags are tags that give structural information to fragments of text. The phrase tags include the <em>, <strong>, <cite>, <dfn>, <code>, <samp>, <kbd>, <var>, <abbr> and the <acronym> tags. I will explain all the tags in a bit. All the tags require an end tag.

Now the <ins> and <del> tags are used to indicate within your web pages that changes have been made. I will first explain the <ins> tag.

The <div> tag is used to define different sections of your web page, which is useful as an organizational tag. The <div> tag is a block level tag which basically means that browsers will usually place a line break before and after the <div> tag. The <div> tag contain any inline level or block level tag you like. The <div> tag also requires an end tag.

What if you want to change your default text color in your web page using HTML. In order to do this you will have to use the <body> tags text attribute to change your default text color.

Now for animated text Internet Explorer has introduced the <marquee> tag to HTML. The <marquee> tag will tell the enclosed text within the tag to scroll across the browser to the left. The <marquee> tag is considered a non standard tag, which simply means your web page will not validate if you add the <marquee> tag to your HTML or XHTML file.

Now in older browsers font sizes always look bigger on the PC then it would on a MAC, but in current browsers on both the PC and the MAC the browsers are set up by default to display at 96 pixels per inch making text more uniform across platforms. However, for the older browsers one way to have a little bit more control over the different sizes of text is to use the <basefont> tag, which has the attributes size, color and face; the face attribute used to be called the name attribute in Internet Explorer 3. The <basefont> tag does not require an end tag but for XHTML it’s required.

The <span> tag identifies inline content like text and other inline tags that you can add CSS or JavaScript too. Inline basically means within another, for example, like a word within a paragraph.