HTML Basic Tags: A Guide for Complete Beginners with Examples

HTML tags are the fundamental elements of HTML used for defining the structure of the document. These are letters or words enclosed by angle brackets ( < and > ).

Usually, most of the HTML tags contain an opening and a closing tag. Each tag has a different meaning, and the browser reads the tags and displays the contents enclosed by them accordingly.

For example, if we wrap any text in the paragraph (p) tag, the browser displays it as a separate paragraph. In this tutorial, we will discuss all the basic tags in HTML .

Heading Tags

Heading tags are used to define headings of documents. You can use different sizes for your headings. HTML also has six levels of headings, which use the elements <h1> , <h2> , <h3> , <h4> , <h5> , and <h6> . While displaying any heading, the browser adds one line before and one line after that heading.

Example

Following HTML code demonstrates various levels of headings:

Paragraph Tag

The p tag offers a way to structure your text into different paragraphs. Each paragraph of text should go in between an opening p and a closing tag.

Example

The following example demonstrates the use of paragraph (p) tag, here we are defining 3 paragraphs −

Line Break Tag

The <br> tag is used to insert a line break in the text. It forces the content after it to appear on the next line. This tag is used whenever you want the text to break into a new line without starting a new paragraph.

Note : The <br> tag is an empty tag and does not need a closing tag.

Example

The following example demonstrates the use of break (<br>) tag −

Center Tag

In HTML, the alignment should be handled using CSS rather than deprecated tags. The <center> tag, previously used to align content to the center of a web page, is deprecated in HTML5. You can use the text-align: center; property of CSS to center text or inline elements.

Example

The following example demonstrates how to center a paragraph using CSS:

Horizonal Rule Tag

The <hr> tag is used to insert a horizontal line across the page. It is commonly used to separate sections of content visually.

Note : Like <br> tag, the <hr> tag is also an empty tag and does not need a closing tag.

Example

The following example draws a horizontal line between two paragraphs −

On executing the above example, you can see a straight line dividing the two paragraphs.

The <hr /> tag is an example of the empty element, where you do not need opening and closing tags, as there is nothing to go in between them.

The <hr /> element has a space between the characters hr and the forward slash. If you omit this space, older browsers will have trouble rendering the horizontal line, while if you miss the forward slash character and just use <hr> , it is not valid in XHTML.

Preserve Formatting Tag

The <pre> tag is used to preserve the formatting. Whenever you want to display content on the webpage exactly in the same format as it was written in the HTML document, you can use the <pre> tag. It preserves the formatting of source code, including line breaks and indentation.

Example

The following example demonstrates the use of the <pre> tag. Here, we are displaying some code that should keep the formatting exactly the same as it is written inside the <pre> tag −

function testFunction( strText ){
 alert (strText)
}

Non-breaking Spaces

Non-breaking spaces prevent an automatic line break and are displayed using the   entity.

Suppose if you want to use the phrase “12 Angry Men.” Here, you would not want a browser to split the “12, Angry” and “Men” across two lines −

An example of this technique appears in the movie “12 Angry Men.”

In cases, where you do not want the client browser to break text, you should use a nonbreaking space entity   instead of a normal space. For example, when coding the “12 Angry Men” in a paragraph, you should use something similar to the following code −

Example

The following example demonstrates the use of   entity −

On executing the above example, it will display the sentence: An example of this technique appears in the movie “12 Angry Men.” twice. Since we have added 3 ” ” characters between 12 and men , the second time, you can observe three spaces.

Listing Tags

The <ul> and <ol> tags create the unordered and ordered listings, and to display list items, the <li> tag is used.

Example

The following example demonstrates the use of listing tags −