Building a Web Site For Dummies®, 3rd Edition

Getting Wordy

Words are the foremost method of communication on the World Wide Web, and it’s a rare Web page indeed that hasn’t got a passel of ’em scattered all over it.

In the examples that are provided in the following sections, I show the basic code necessary for creating the particular elements that I talk about.

Paragraphs

Paragraph elements are what you normally use to place text on a Web page. You put the text between the <P> and </P> tags, as in the following example:

<P>This is where the textual content goes.</P>            

Technically, the end tag for a P element is optional in HTML. You don’t need to include it, although most Web-page creation programs add it automatically.

Web browsers automatically add a bit of space between paragraphs. If you want some extra space, you can add it by using the line break, or BR, element, as the following example shows:

<P>This is the first paragraph.</P>                        
							<BR>                                                       
							<P>This paragraph has a space above it.</P>                

Figure 3-4 shows the results of using the BR element.

Figure 3-4. Paragraphs with line breaks add more white space to your Web page.

[View full size image]

You can usually get away with using an empty P element — one with no content between the start and end tags — to create a blank line between paragraphs instead of using a BR element. Unfortunately, this technique doesn’t work for all Web browsers. Because empty P elements aren’t allowed ...