by Tom Savola, Mark Brown, John Jung, Bill Brandon, Robert Meegan, Kenneth Murphy,
Jim O'Donnell, and Stephen R. Pietrowicz
HTML: The Bricks and Mortar of the Web
Now that you know where the Web came from, it's time to jump into the whole melange feet first-but with your eyes open. HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is what you use to create Web pages, and it's the topic of this book.
HTML is relatively simple in both concept and execution. In fact, if you have ever used a very old word processor, you are already familiar with the concept of a markup language.
In the "good old days" of word processing, if you wanted text to appear in, say, italics, you might surround it with control characters like this:
/Ithis is in italics/I
The "/I" at the beginning would indicate to the word processor that, when printed, the text following should be italicized. The "/I" would turn off italics so that any text afterward would be printed in a normal font. You literally marked up the text for printing just as you would if you were making editing marks on a printed copy with an editor's red pencil.
HTML works in much the same way. If, for example, you want text to appear on a Web page in italics, you mark it like this: