This simple page will be used to show how HTML positions text on a screen display.
To illustrate, we will use only the <p> tag, or paragraph tag.
It puts a blank line between blocks of text, to separate them into two paragraphs. If there were no <p> tag, there would be no separation. It would all be one paragraph
Press \ to see the HTML code for this page. Press it often to compare the tags and then the result they produce.
When a browser like Lynx opens an HTML file (one with a name like filename.html) it automatically reads and adjusts all the text.
Every space between characters, no matter how large, is reduced down to a single blank space one character wide. If there are six blank lines between two words, they will be compressed into one single space.
If tabs were inserted, each reduces down to one space. If several tabs in a row contained no data, all would reduce down to one space. ** CAREFULLY POSITIONED TEXT ** with several spaces between words, would each close up to a single space between each word.
End-of-lines are ignored. With a nice vertical list of words, the remainder of each line will be reduced to a single space. The list will become a single line of text, with one space between each item.
Note that Paragraphs are automatically filled, or justified, following the <p> tag. This sentence and the previous sentence will appear in the same paragraph, even though they are apart in the source document.
This is another paragraph.
So is this.
Note that the paragraph tag can be on a line in front of the paragraph, on the first line, or at the end of the last line, to create a new paragraph that follows.
Note also that HTML tags can be either upper or lower case, or a mixture. It doesn't matter which. Some html authors prefer writing all tags in upper case so they can more easily be seen in lengthy documents.
Last modified 1996/04/28 17:05:32 GMY by helpdoc