The B. Davis Schwartz Memorial Library   What are HTML Tags?
HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language, and HTML tags are
instructions placed within angle brackets < > that tell your
computer how the text and graphics (pictures or images) on a web
page should be displayed. In most cases, the tags come in pairs
like this: <TAG> </TAG>. The first tag tells the computer to
start doing something to the text, and the second tag (with a
slash /) tells it to stop.  For example, to produce the boldface
text around the word "start" in the above sentence, the HTML
tags would look like this:  tells the computer to <B>start</B>
doing something  In most cases, it does not matter if you use
upper case or lower case letters in the tags, but there are a
few important exceptions that will be discussed later.  What Are
Browsers?  A browser is the software that you use to retrieve
and view web pages. Currently, the two most widely used
graphical browsers (browsers that can display pictures) are
Netscape and Internet Explorer.