HTML Formatting
If you use a word processor, you must be familiar with the ability to make text bold, italicized, or underlined; these are just three of the ten options available to indicate how text can appear in HTML and XHTML.
Bold Text
Anything that appears within <b>...</b> element, is displayed in bold as shown below:
Example
<!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <title>Bold Text Example</title> </head> <body> <p>The following word uses a <b>bold</b> typeface.</p> </body> </html>
This will produce following result:
The following word uses a bold typeface.
Italic Text
Anything that appears within <i>...</i> element is displayed in italicized as shown below:
Example
<!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <title>Italic Text Example</title> </head> <body> <p>The following word uses a <i>italicized</i> typeface.</p> </body> </html>
This will produce following result:
The following word uses a italicized typeface.
Underlined Text
Anything that appears within <u>...</u> element, is displayed with underline as shown below:
Example
<!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <title>Underlined Text Example</title> </head> <body> <p>The following word uses a <u>underlined</u> typeface.</p> </body> </html>
This will produce following result:
The following word uses a underlined typeface.
Strike Text
Anything that appears within <strike>...</strike> element is displayed with strikethrough, which is a thin line through the text as shown below:
Example
<!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <title>Strike Text Example</title> </head> <body> <p>The following word uses a <strike>strikethrough</strike> typeface.</p> </body> </html>
This will produce following result:
The following word uses a strikethrough typeface.
Monospaced Font
The content of a <tt>...</tt> element is written in monospaced font. Most of the fonts are known as variable-width fonts because different letters are of different widths (for example, the letter 'm' is wider than the letter 'i'). In a monospaced font, however, each letter has the same width.
Example
<!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <title>Monospaced Font Example</title> </head> <body> <p>The following word uses a <tt>monospaced</tt> typeface.</p> </body> </html>
This will produce following result:
The following word uses a monospaced typeface.
Superscript Text
The content of a <sup>...</sup> element is written in superscript; the font size used is the same size as the characters surrounding it but is displayed half a character's height above the other characters.
Example
<!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <title>Superscript Text Example</title> </head> <body> <p>The following word uses a <sup>superscript</sup> typeface.</p> </body> </html>
This will produce following result:
The following word uses a superscript typeface.
Subscript Text
The content of a <sub>...</sub> element is written in subscript; the font size used is the same as the characters surrounding it, but is displayed half a character's height beneath the other characters.
Example
<!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <title>Subscript Text Example</title> </head> <body> <p>The following word uses a <sub>subscript</sub> typeface.</p> </body> </html>
This will produce following result:
The following word uses a subscript typeface.
Inserted Text
Anything that appears within <ins>...</ins> element is displayed as inserted text.
Example
<!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <title>Inserted Text Example</title> </head> <body> <p>I want to drink <del>cola</del> <ins>wine</ins></p> </body> </html>
This will produce following result:
I want to drink cola wine
Deleted Text
Anything that appears within <del>...</del> element, is displayed as deleted text.
Example
<!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <title>Deleted Text Example</title> </head> <body> <p>I want to drink <del>cola</del> <ins>wine</ins></p> </body> </html>
This will produce following result:
I want to drink cola wine
Larger Text
The content of the <big>...</big> element is displayed one font size larger than the rest of the text surrounding it as shown below:
Example
<!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <title>Larger Text Example</title> </head> <body> <p>The following word uses a <big>big</big> typeface.</p> </body> </html>
This will produce following result:
The following word uses a big typeface.
Smaller Text
The content of the <small>...</small> element is displayed one font size smaller than the rest of the text surrounding it as shown below:
Example
<!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <title>Smaller Text Example</title> </head> <body> <p>The following word uses a <small>small</small> typeface.</p> </body> </html>
This will produce following result:
The following word uses a small typeface.
Grouping Content
The <div> and <span> elements allow you to group together several elements to create sections or subsections of a page.
For example, you might want to put all of the footnotes on a page within a <div> element to indicate that all of the elements within that <div> element relate to the footnotes. You might then attach a style to this <div> element so that they appear using a special set of style rules.
Example
<!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <title>Div Tag Example</title> </head> <body> <div id="menu" align="middle" > <a href="/index.htm">HOME</a> | <a href="/about/contact_us.htm">CONTACT</a> | <a href="/about/index.htm">ABOUT</a> </div> <div id="content" align="left" bgcolor="white"> <h5>Content Articles</h5> <p>Actual content goes here.....</p> </div> </body> </html>
This will produce following result:
CONTENT ARTICLES
Actual content goes here.....
The <span> element, on the other hand, can be used to group inline elements only. So, if you have a part of a sentence or paragraph which you want to group together, you could use the <span> element as follows
Example
<!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <title>Span Tag Example</title> </head> <body> <p>This is the example of <span style="color:green">span tag</span> and the <span style="color:red">div tag</span> alongwith CSS</p> </body> </html>
This will produce following result:
This is the example of span tag and the div tag alongwith CSS
These tags are commonly used with CSS to allow you to attach a style to a section of a page.
