Basic Structural Tags

Basic Structure

There are four basic structural tags that are required for HTML documents. These include:

<!doctype >

The <!Doctype> tag defines the version of HTML being used.

<html>...</html>

Each HTML document begins with <HTML> and ends with </HTML>. This defines the file as an HTML document.

<head>...</head>

Directly following the opening <html> tag is the <head> section. It also requires a closing </head> tag. The head section contains items such as the <title> and other general information about the document. At a minimum the <head> section should contain a <title>...</title> tags, which is the text that is displayed in the titlebar of the browser window. The <head> section usually also contains various <meta> tags which describe miscellaneous pieces of information such as the content-type, generator or author.

<body>...</body>

The <body> section contains all of the content that is actually rendered in the browser. Like the other two structural tags, it must have a closing </body> tag. Any text, graphics, or other elements that you want displayed in the browser are referenced here.

Additionally, if a site uses frames, the following structural tags will be used (an there will be no <body> section):

To see examples of these tags, use the View Source option in your browser for this page. Comments are inserted to help you see the relevent structural tags.