What is HTML?

Understand how HTML gives structure to every web page — like a skeleton gives shape to a body.

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Why does HTML exist?

Imagine you wrote an essay and emailed it to a friend, but when they opened it, all the headings, paragraphs, and bullet points were gone — just one giant wall of text. That is exactly what would happen on the web without HTML.

HTML was invented in 1991 by Tim Berners-Lee to solve this problem. He needed a way to share scientific documents between universities so that the structure — headings, paragraphs, links to other documents — would be preserved no matter what computer opened them. HTML is that solution: a language that marks up plain text with tags that describe its structure.

The name says it all: HyperText Markup Language. 'HyperText' means text with links (you can click to jump to other documents). 'Markup' means you annotate the text to describe its role.

Think of it this way: Think of HTML like the labels on a filing cabinet. The papers inside are your content, but without the labels — 'Invoices,' 'Contracts,' 'Personal' — you would have no idea what anything is. HTML labels your content so the browser knows what to do with it.

Web Standard

HTML is maintained by the WHATWG (Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group) as a 'living standard' — it is continuously updated rather than released in numbered versions. The current specification is simply called 'HTML.'

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