So, you want to know how to do some text? Well, it's really quite simple, and once you figure it out you'll have lots of fun composing your site. To follow along in an actual web page, go to my practice page (http://members.tripod.com/ ~lemmykoopa/lkmainl.htm) in another browser window. Click the page with your right mouse button, and click view source on the menu that appears. Maximize the new window, and you'll see what the page is made of. Now count the lines - blank lines don't count as they do not effect the page - and go to lines 35 to 44.

This is the page's first visible text. Let's see what everything does.

<P> This starts the line and tells the program to start a new paragraph. You can also use this to change alignment. Left is the default, but you could also do "<P Align="Center">" or <P Align="Right">. To go back to left alignment, just do "</center>".

<B> This makes the text bold, or darker. I prefer text to be bold, but you don't need to if you don't like it. You could also do "<I>" to make Italics or "<U>" to make the text underlined, or any combination of the three.

<FONT COLOR="#000000"> This sets the text color, in this case to black. The color of the text is determined by the six characters after the # sign, which are 1 to 9 and A to F. I don't have a list of all the color combinations, but when you make your page you can have fun experimenting.

<FONT FACE="Arial, Helvetica"> This sets the text font, in this case to Arial Helvetica. Just like with the color, you can experiment with this as well until you find a font you like.

Now you're ready to write! Write the text you want displayed just like you were writing a document in Microsoft Word. If you study my HTML, you will see some weird symbols, such as "&nbsp;". You do not need them. That symbol happens to create two spaces, but you could also just press your space bar twice. The text does not go between carrots (< and >), so just type!

When you are done writing, you may wish to close off the text. This is not necessary, unless you want to change font or style.

</FONT> This closes off the font and the text color. If you were to type text after this, it would be white and in a small font, not good for most pages. If you want to reset the color and font, do so by using the above directions. You also need to use this each time you place a link, otherwise the program won't recognize the link as HTML coding but as text.

</B> This ends the boldness; from here on the text will not be bold. You could also do "</I>" or "</U>". This is not necessary unless you no longer wish the text to be bold.

Ta da! You have just written a whole entire paragraph! Now you can write anything on any of your pages that you want. Remember that you don't need to set the font or color in each paragraph; you only need to do that in your first paragraph or when you cancel them. Get your page started and go wild!

Go back to Lemmy's HTML Guide.

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