HTML Tags – Just a Vapor

Since I began blogging, I have learned a lot about HTML coding. I had a
little training in a single computer class I had to take in college,
where we did HTML somewhere between Microsoft Word and Excel. Since
then I’ve known enough HTML to troubleshoot, but not enough to design
an entire website in notepad.

I’ve been expanding my knowledge of tags since getting into blogging,
setting up posts to look the right way. Many of my readers are fellow
bloggers, and HTML tags are something some know, and others don’t. I
thought I’d do a post to help those who don’t.

Many of these tags work if you like to leave comments on Haloscan
enabled pages and some Movably Type pages, depending on whether or not
the blog owner allows tags. I do allow tags, since MT-Blacklist tends to
catch the tags that are the reason some do not allow tags, the spam
tags with links to sties hocking crap no one admits to wanting.

Here are a few tags that I tend to use with moderate to high frequency:

<a href=”[link URL]”
>[link text]</a> – Adds a link.
<a href=”[link URL]”
target=”_new”>[link text]</a> – Adds a link. The
target=”_new” part forces the browser to open the link in a new window.
[text]
– makes text bold.
[text]
– also makes text bold.
[text]
– makes text italics.
[text]
– also makes text italics.
[text]
– makes text underlined.
<s>[text]</s>
– makes text strikethrough.
<strike>[text]</strike>
– also makes text strikethrough.
<tt>[text]</text>
– makes text look like it's from an old typewriter.
<big>[text]</big>
– makes text one size larger. Use multiple times for larger and larger
text.
[text]
– makes text one size smaller. Use multiple times for smaller and
smaller text.
<img src=”[image URL]”>
– inserts an image.
<blockquote>[text]</blockquote>
– indents and seperates text for a large quote block. The example of lists below is a blockquote (my blockquotes appear different than normal because blockquotes are defined in my stylesheets file).
<ol>[list items]</ol>
– creates an ordered (numbered) list. The “Other Links” at the bottom
of this post is an ordered list.
<ul>[list items]</ul>
– creates an unordered (bulleted) list, this list is unordered.
<li>[individual list
item]</li> – defines one item in a list, used inside
either of the above list tags.
Example:

This:

<ol>
<li>list item 1</li>
<li>list item 2</li>
<li>list item 3</li>
<li>list item 4</li>
<li>list item 5</li>
</ol>

Appears like this in the browser:
1. list item 1
2. list item 2
3. list item 3
4. list item 4
5. list item 5
– enters a
carriage return. Sometimes simply pressing ‘enter’ doesn’t give the
desired effect, if that’s the case, insert this tag.
<hr> – inserts a
horizontal line that spans the entire page or frame (if you have
frames). On my blog, it would only span the width of a post.