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Quick Reference Sheets for Webmasters

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HTML Reference Sheet

Text & Text Formatting

The following sections discuss issues surrounding the structuring of text. Elements that present text (alignment elements, font elements, style sheets, etc.) are discussed elsewhere in the specification. For information about characters, please consult the section on the document character set.

White space

The document character set includes a wide variety of white space characters. Many of these are typographic elements used in some applications to produce particular visual spacing effects. In HTML, only the following characters are defined as white space characters:

  • ASCII space (&#x0020;)
  • ASCII tab (&#x0009;)
  • ASCII form feed (&#x000C;)
  • Zero-width space (&#x200B;)

Line breaks are also white space characters. Note that although &#x2028; and &#x2029; are defined in [ISO10646] to unambiguously separate lines and paragraphs, respectively, these do not constitute line breaks in HTML, nor does this specification include them in the more general category of white space characters.

Note that a sequence of white spaces between words in the source document may result in an entirely different rendered inter-word spacing (except in the case of the PRE element). In particular, user agents should collapse input white space sequences when producing output inter-word space. This can and should be done even in the absence of language information (from the lang attribute, the HTTP "Content-Language" header field (see [RFC2616], section 14.12), user agent settings, etc.).

Structured Text


Phrase elements add structural information to text fragments. The usual meanings of phrase elements are following:


Indicates emphasis. Visual effect is the same as italics.


Indicates stronger emphasis. Visual effect is the same as bold


Contains a citation or a reference to other sources.


Indicates that this is the defining instance of the enclosed term.


Designates a fragment of computer code.


Designates sample output from programs, scripts, etc.


Designates sample output from programs, scripts, etc.


Indicates text to be entered by the user.


Indicates an instance of a variable or program argument.





Lines and Paragraphs

Authors traditionally divide their thoughts and arguments into sequences of paragraphs. The organization of information into paragraphs is not affected by how the paragraphs are presented: paragraphs that are double-justified contain the same thoughts as those that are left-justified.

The HTML markup for defining a paragraph is straightforward: the P element defines a paragraph.

<title>Jedi Master Guild. Join with the Forces</title>
<meta name="Author" content="John Doe">

<h1>Welcome to Jedi Master Guild</h1>
<p lang="fr">... paragraph set to use character set for the french language ...</p>
<h2>Introduct to Jedi Mastering</h2>
<p>This is how you define your paragraph.</p>
<p>This is another paragraph.</p>