Bold, Italics and Other HTML Tags

Allowed HTML tags are: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> and <dd>

• <a> is for making tidy-looking links.

  If you want to link to:

  http://www.abctales.com/story/ftse100/fishcake-day

  for example, you can just type in the URI (as above)
  or, to make it neater, you can use <a> (called an anchor tag).

  To use an anchor tag you would type in something like:

  Footsie's <a href="http://www.abctales.com/story/ftse100/fishcake-day">Fishcake Day</a> story.

  and it would appear like this:

  Footsie's Fishcake Day story.

  A lot neater than the first link, don't you think? It looks a bit complicated, but the recipe is simple.

  The magic formula is: <a href="URI">description</a>

  where URI is the gunk you normally copy in to make a link and description is the text you want the reader to see.

  Notice that the URI goes inside the opening tag, and should be in double quotes. The text you want to display goes between the opening and closing tags.

  Easy!

• <em> is for emphasised text.

  By default, browsers display emphasised text in italics.

  The magic formula is: <em>text you want in italics</em>

  and it displays like this:

  text you want in italics

  Don't forget the closing tag, even if you want the italics to run right to the end of your post, otherwise everything lower on the page will be in italics too. The opening tag shows where you want the italics to start; the closing tag shows where you want them to stop.

• <strong> is for strong text.

  By default, browsers display strong text as bold text.

  The magic formula is: <strong>text you want in bold</strong>

  and it displays like this:

  text you want in bold

  Don't forget the closing tag, even if you want the bold text to run right to the end of your post, otherwise everything lower on the page will be bold too. The opening tag shows where you want the bold text to start; the closing tag shows where you want it to stop.

• <cite> is for cited text

  By default, browsers display cited text in italics.

  The magic formula is: <cite>text you want to cite</cite>

  and it displays like this:

  text you want to cite

  So why not just use <em>? The reason is that ABC can provide your browser with a style sheet and tell it to display <em> and <cite> differently. Even if it makes no difference today, that doesn't mean it won't tomorrow, so it's always best to use the right tag.

• <code> is for computer code.

  By default, browsers display code in a monospaced typeface (one where all the letters take up the same amount of space, so an i (not very wide) is allowed just as much room as an m.

  The magic formula is: <code>computer code</code>

  and it displays like this:

  computer code

  You can, of course, use it for anything else you want displayed in a monospaced typeface. Because each character has the same width it's handy if you want text to align vertically. See the chemical diagrams in Footsie's A Gas Called Calor for instance.

• <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> and <dd> are for making lists.

  I'll show you how to use them if anybody asks. This entire post (apart from the first and last paragraphs) is laid out as an unordered list, using the <ul> and <li> tags. When you make an unordered list, the bullet points are provided free of charge!

If you want to refer to this later, copy it now!