This is an example of a basic HTML document. You will find the description of the different lines below.
Line 1; This line is not required and is only used by an SGML parser. Wassat? I hear you say, well a SGML parser reads a HTML document and will check the tags, etc. and report back any errors that you made (a kind of spell checker for HTML). This line tells the SGML utility several things, but mainly what version of HTML you are using, in this case HTML 3.2.
Line 2 and 10; The <HTML> tags tell the browser that the document is indeed in HTML format. This tag can be left out, but is considered bad practice to do so, so should always be used. There is also the chance that leaving it out could cause problems with older browsers.
Line 3 and 6; The <HEAD> tags contain special information for the browser that is generally not seen in the main window. The <TITLE> and <META> tags are just two that go here.
Line 4; Use the <TITLE> tag to give your documents a title that will appear at the top of your browser. Keep the title short, but descriptive as this is what will be shown when a viewer bookmarks your page. E.G., "My homepage" will probably mean nothing to your homepage viewer a month after being bookmarked. Something like "Joe Blogg's Sewing Homepage" would be better.
Line 5; I shall not go into <META> tags in great detail here, but they are used to control how search engines (those that support META tags) index, if at all, your pages.
Lines 7 and 9; You will find the content that is viewed in the browser window is contained within the <BODY> tags.
Line 8; Your page content goes here...