If you write for websites, you need to know the basics of HTML. Even if you do your writing in Microsoft Word, Open Office, or a Web editor, it will get turned into HTML (or, less often, PDF). You need to understand how it will work in its final form.

HTML is a markup language. It’s text which contains plain human language plus tags that tell the browser how to render it. The tags are more guidelines than rules. They indicate an intent rather than dictating an exact appearance. In different browsers, or even different settings in the same browser, you might see differences in fonts, spacing, colors, and so on.

A tag is enclosed in angle brackets. Usually a closing tag follows it, to indicate where its effect ends. The closing tag has a slash in front of the name. To indicate that a piece of text should be in boldface, you would use

<strong>a piece of text</strong>

You have a <strong> tag where the bold text starts, then a closing tag where it ends. That tag actually means “strong emphasis,” though normally it’s rendered as boldface. There’s also a <b> tag, which literally insists on boldface, but normally it’s preferable to give the browser the flexibility. HTML is mostly about intent, not appearance.

Some tags are “self-closing,” meaning they don’t enclose anything and don’t require a closing tag. An example is the line break tag. A line break just happens. It doesn’t enclose any text.

Line 1<br>
Line 2

HTML provides a common vocabulary. Whatever software you use, HTML terminology is the language it reduces to on the Web. You need to know how header tags, paragraphs, text styling, and links work. That way you can explain what you’re doing to the customer, and you can understand what the customer wants.

A full HTML file consists of a header and a body, but as a writer, you’re usually creating just a fragment to drop into an existing page. You can focus on understanding the markup without worrying about the document’s structure. But you should be comfortable with reading basic markup, and you should know how to insert it into a document.

Interpretation, not appearance

HTML markup doesn’t dictate a specific appearance. You’re giving information on the interpretation of the document, not direct instructions about its appearance. Different browsers will show the same HTML differently. Accessibility aids may render it as speech or display it in a larger size. A well-designed page uses CSS (cascading style sheets) to exercise detailed control over appearance.

The advantage of CSS is that it makes the appearance uniform and easy to change. The page designer can specify a style for all <h2> tags, and then just has to change it in one place to give them all a new appearance.

That’s why you should use the header tags (e.g., <h2>) for headers, instead of something like a <strong> tag. You’re writing the content, not designing the appearance of the page. The header tags let the page designer decide how they should look. They also give information about the article’s structure to accessibility aids.

You need to find out from the customer what level of headers you can start at. Normally the h1 tag is for the whole page, so you wouldn’t use that. If you can’t get exact information, starting with h2 headers and nesting lower-level headers as necessary is the safest practice.

Learning more

It would be silly of me to try to provide a serious introduction to HTML in a blog post. All I’ve tried to offer here is the motivation to learn it and a general idea of what it’s about. Lots of good introductions exist, though many of them would overwhelm a non-technical person. Here are some that are suited for a writer trying to learn the basics.

HTML Beginner? Get Started Today With This Guide. This article covers the basics without wandering too far into advanced issues. You don’t really need to worry much about the distinction between block and inline elements.

HTML for Beginners. This one provides a bit more detail.

HTML Codes. Bits of HTML markup for all occasions, which you can just paste into your document.