HTML Basics

You may sometimes wish to use HTML tags to format specific portions of text. While this is by no means comprehensive, the following chart shows some basic HTML formatting tags.

Depending on your site's design, it may be using stylesheets to modify these tags. In that case, the way you type the tags will not change, but the result will.

For example, the <h1> tag may be defined to not only enlarge and bold the text, but also make it a dark blue color in Arial font. You would still type the <h1> tag the same way, but the result would be in dark blue Arial rather than the default you see below. This can be a very useful "shorthand" tool for formatting your text, and it allows you to make global formatting changes without editing the text. Your designer can redefine these settings in your stylesheet.

IMPORTANT: Always remember the closing tag (with the "/" in front of it) at the end of your text. If you forget this, it can effect the format of the entire remainder of the page.

To do this... Type this... And it looks like this...
Bold <b>your text</b> your text
Italicize <i>your text</i> your text
Bold & Italicize <b><i>your text<i></b> your text
Small Text <small>your text</small> your text
Link <a href="http://yoursite.com">your text</a> your text
Heading 1

Heading 2


Heading 3

Heading 4

Heading 5

Heading 6 		<h1>your text</h1>


<h2>your text</h2>


<h3>your text</h3>

<h4>your text</h4>

<h5>your text</h5>

<h6>your text</h6>

your text

your text

your text

your text

your text
your text
Ordered List (Numbered) <ol>
<li>first item
<1i>second item
<li>etc...
</ol>
  1. first item
  2. second item
  3. etc...
Unordered List (Bulleted) <ul>
<li>first item
<1i>second item
<li>etc...
</ul>
  • first item
  • second item
  • etc...
    • Hard Break* your<br>text your
    text
    *Note: When editing Detail text in WebOnTheFly, lines within a paragraph will wrap automatically to fit the space available, and you can start a new paragraph by simply pressing the Enter key twice. That will leave a blank line between paragraphs. The "hard break" instructions above are only necessary when you need a single line break at a specific spot with no blank line.