HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language. It is the "language" that is used by web browsers to display websites. HTML uses special codes, or tags, that tell the browser how to display a web pages. These tags wrap around text to specify how text or images should be formatted.

For example, the tag to make a text bold is "<B>" and "</B>". For any text you want to make bold, simple place them inside of "<B>...text...</B>" tags.

To use HTML properly, you must adhere to standards published by W3C (http://www.w3.org/MarkUp). This ensures HTML code you write today will work with web browsers since W3C defines a systematic way a browser should parse and deliver HTML content.

There may have been times where you have been to a website that looks like the designer "messed up." The designer probably coded in a way that violated W3C standards and did not check the output on various browsers. Just because a page looks one way in Internet Explorer doesn't mean it will look the same way in Netscape's browser.

Knowing HTML is just the beginning to developing web sites. These days, there are many other technologies you can use to develop a web site. Even with all of the different and new ways to spice up your website, HTML is still at the bottom of it all.