How to "Markup" a Page for the Web

Web pages are marked-up using hypertext markup language (HTML). This is a set of commands that tell browsers (like Netscape) how the page should look and be interpreted. A partial list of those commands that are most commonly used is available in the file commands.txt .

If a file is named with a .htm extension, like sample.htm , the browser will recognize it as a web file and all HTML commands will be operational, including links to other files. Links to regular text files (like commands.txt shown above) can be made, but HTML commands will not be recognized within those files. To exit a text file you must click on the "Back" button at the top of the Netscape screen.

The commands used to produce a page can be seen by clicking View at the top of the Netscape screen, and then clicking on Document Source. The source for this page is available in a separate file so it can be printed out and used as a reference.

There are four commands that should be on every web page. These commands include an HTML command that identifies the document as a web page, and a BODY command that indicates where the body of the document begins. Each of these have a corresponding /BODY and /HTML command after the body of the document and at the end of the page, respectively. This pattern of a COMMAND and a /COMMAND which enclose the text to be acted upon is common in the HTML language. One exception that you should know about is the paragraph command, p. Browsers ignore a /p command. These commands are enclosed in "pointy" brackets (the less than, <, and greater than, >, symbols).

It doesn't matter if the commands are upper or lower case.

To see how some of the other commands are used, view the source of a page that has what you are interested in. Notice that these commands can be placed on separate lines, like in this document, or put together on one line.