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HTML uses special tags to give instructions
to web browsers, like Internet Explorer or Firefox,
on how to display a page.
In this lesson, we're going to learn the basics
about what makes up an HTML tag.
All HTML tags are enclosed within these symbols.
The one on the left can be referred to as either
a lesser-than symbol or as a left angle bracket.
You may hear the symbol on the right referred to
as either a greater-than symbol
or as a right angle bracket.
There's countless HTML tags, but, for now,
let's look at a couple of really simple ones:
the bold tag and the italics tag.
The bold tag is just the letter b
between the angle brackets.
The italics tag is just the letter i.
These tags tell the internet browser
to make the text bold or italicized.
Usually, HTML tags are used in pairs—
an opening tag (or start tag) and
a closing tag (or end tag).
The closing tag looks just like the opening tag
except that it has a forward slash
right after the first angle bracket.
The part of the web page affected by the tag
will need to be between the opening and closing tags.
A pair of HTML tags can contain not only text
but also other HTML tags.
For example, we could bold some text
within some italicized text.