Making Words Look Different

At this time there are 3 styles of text supported by most WWW browsers.
When using character types always make sure you close the tags after you have opened them.

The 3 Physical Styles are:

Bold -- which uses the tag.
Italic -- which uses the tag.
Typewriter Text -- which uses the <TT> tag.

Example:

<html>
<head>
<title>Text Styles: Example</title>
</head>
Bold faced text
 
Italic text
 
<TT>Typewriter text</tt>
</body>
</html>

Formatted Character Styles

Some browsers are no allowing you to use the tag. This tag allows you to set how big your font will be from 1-7. Remember that this only sets things internal to your page, so if the client sets their browser to 20 pt fonts these numbers will only make it slightly smaller or larger. You must close this tag.

You can also label text using Logical Styles.
The Logical Styles are:

<DFN>: -For a word being defined. Typically displayed in italics. (NCSA Mosaic is a World Wide Web browser.)
: -For emphasis. Typically displayed in italics. (Watch out for pickpockets.)
<CITE>: -For titles of books, films, etc. Typically displayed in italics. (A Beginner's Guide to HTML )
<CODE>: -For snippets of computer code. Displayed in a fixed-width font. (The <stdio.h> header file)
<KBD>: -For user keyboard entry. Should be displayed in a bold fixed-width font, but many browsers render it in the plain fixed-width font. (Enter passwd to change your password.)
<SAMP>: -For computer status messages. Displayed in a fixed-width font. (Segmentation fault: Core dumped.)
: -For strong emphasis. Typically displayed in bold. (Important)
<VAR>: -For a ``metasyntactic'' variable, where the user is to replace the variable with a specific instance. Typically displayed in italics. (rm filename deletes the file.)

When To Use One Or The Other

Physical Styles will always look the same on any browser you use. On the other hand, Logical Styles may change from one WWW browser to another. The reason for using Physical Styles is to keep control of what your text will look like. The reason for using Logical Styles, is that consistency will be maintained between your documents and others on the server. Also, when more Physical Styles are added to HTML you may find that the Logical Styles look different than they do today.

In the next section you will be shown how to add s to your text.

The National Center for Supercomputing Applications
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

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Making Words Look Different

When To Use One Or The Other

Last modified: June 19, 1997