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Structure of a HTML Document

This page is part of the WebCom Web Publishing Guide. It explains how HTML documents are organized, and the purpose of each section within a HTML document.

HTML documents are divided into two sections: a "head", and a "body". The "head" contains information about the document itself (a title, indexing information, ownership) and the "body" consists of the document itself, the images, text, and hotlinks to other documents and files displayed by the Web browser.

Head Section (also called "header")

<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Web Communications HTML Guide: Head Section</TITLE>
</HEAD>

(We also recommend that you include META tags in your header (after the title, and beforethe closing HEAD tag)).

The head section is opened and closed by the <HEAD> and </HEAD> tags. Information belonging in the head section should be placed between these two tags. The tags in the example above form a minimal head section, and should be included at the beginning of every HTML document.

Information about individual tags within the head section can be found by clicking on the highlighted tags. Advanced uses of the head section (such as indexing) are covered in optional head tags.

Body Section

...
</HEAD>

<BODY>

<H1>Introduction</H1>

The body section is opened and closed by the <BODY> and <BODY> tags. The text and images of the document itself, to be displayed by the Web browser, should be placed within these two tags.

The opening tag should be placed immediately after the closing head tag (</HEAD>), and before any images or text included in the document itself, as in the example above. A matching </BODY> must be placed at the end of the page. This tag ends the body section, and should be placed at the end of the document, after any images or text included in it.

Tags Ending a Page

</BODY>
</HTML>

</BODY> ends the portion of the page containing the document itself, and should be placed after any text or images that will be displayed in the document itself. </HTML> ends the page itself. The head and body sections are enclosed within the opening <HTML> and closing </HTML> tags.

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