Headings and Paragraphs

Let's start out with heading tags. These tags are good for creating titles or section headings. Here are some examples:

<h1>Large Heading!</h1>  will give us:

Large Heading!

<h2>Heading 2</h2>

Heading 2

<h3>Heading 3</h3>

Heading 3

<h4>Getting Small</h4>

Getting Small

<h5>Smaller Still...</h5>

Smaller Still...

<h6>You must have good vision...</h6>

You must have good vision...

Okay, I think you get the idea here. Now let's move on to a line break. The tag for a line break is <br />. When you insert this tag in your document, the contents will go to the next line. The <br /> tag does not need a closing tag afterward. Here is an example:

End this line now!!<br />Thanks!

This will generate the following:

End this line now!!
Thanks!

Basically, a line break is like hitting the "enter" key when you are writing text. The browser will not go to the next line until it runs out of space, or sees a tag that will force it to the next line. So typing the following in your text editor will display only one line of text in the browser:

Hello,
I want
a new line.

This gives us:

Hello, I want a new line.

To make the text move to the next line, use your <br /> tag from above:

Hello,<br />
I want<br />
a new line.

Now this will do what we wanted it to do:

Hello,
I want
a new line.

Now, let's move on to the paragraph tag, <p>. This tag will skip a vertical space after going to the next line, as though you had typed <br /> twice. This tag is good for skipping a line quickly and for knowing where you wanted a new paragraph to begin. How about an example? Well, O.K.:

This is some cool stuff.
<br />
This is the next line.
<p>
This is a new paragraph. Is this cool or what?
</p>

This will give us the following:

So, now you can create a Web page full of text. Isn't it great? Well, there is still more of this in the next section, Manipulating Font Size and Color.