Your first page
What an element is, and what the browser does with the text you write.
A web page is text with markers in it. The markers are called tags, and a browser reads them to decide what each piece of the text is.
<h1>A heading</h1>
<p>A paragraph.</p>
Most tags come in pairs. <h1> opens, </h1> closes, and what sits between
them is the content. The browser does not draw the tags — it draws the content,
in the way the tag asks for: <h1> large and bold, <p> as a block of prose.
Try it
The playground beside this has a page in it. Change the words between the tags and it redraws as you type.
Then try two things that teach more than they look like:
- Add another
<p>under the first one. Two paragraphs, two blocks. - Delete the
</h1>. The page still shows something — browsers are forgiving — but the rest of it is swallowed by the heading. That is why closing matters.