246996016-HTML5-Step-by-Step

3 Formatting Text by
Using Tags
In this chapter, you will learn how to
4 Create headings.
4 Apply bold and italic formatting.
4 Apply superscript and subscript formatting.
4 Use monospaced and preformatted text.
4 Format a block quotation.
4 Configure Internet Explorer view settings.
Creating Web pages is not word processing. It’s important to keep that in mind as you
learn HTML, because I’m going to ask you to be patient for a few chapters as you learn
HTML the right way—that is, the standards-compliant way.
When most people think of formatting text, the first thing that pops into their minds
is choosing a font—a typeface, size, and color. That’s easy to do in a word-processing
document, but in HTML it’s more complicated. Early versions of HTML used a
tag to specify a particular typeface, size, and color. If it were ten years ago, I would be
happy to teach you that tag in this chapter, but the tag has been removed from
HTML5. Even though most browsers still recognize the tag, you shouldn’t use
it: it’s obsolete. Therefore, rather than teach you bad habits with old tags, I’m going to
teach you how to apply typefaces, sizes, and colors to text with styles—but not in this
chapter. Although using styles is a superior way of applying fonts to text, it is a little more
advanced than you’re ready for just yet. You’ll learn all about using fonts in HTML code in
Part 2, “Style Sheets and Graphics.”
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