Web Design for Beginners

Free top tips for web designers



HTML Paragraphs and Line Breaks

By James Middleton - Added 29th of August 2008

As we have seen in previous tutorials on the subject of creating a webpage using HTML, the structuring of your HTML document is uniformal as follows:


<html>

<head>
<title>Title for this page</title>
</head>

<body>
This is where the content for this page will reside.
</body>

</html>


Naturally, the copy within your <body></body> tags will wrap around and around unless you add a little more HTML code to break thing up a little. Just adding a line break within your source will do nothing. You have got to code the paragraph or line break into the actual HTML.

Paragraphs in HTML


A paragraph is a "distinct subdivisions of a text intended to separate ideas". In HTML terms it is denoted by the following code:


<p>This is a paragraph.</p>


If you add more content beneath this paragraph or indeed another paragraph, you will notice and natural 'double return' within your copy. Using paragraphs is a useful way of format your text to make it very readable for your visitors.

Line Breaks


A line break is characterised by a 'single return', where the copy preceeds after the line break directly beneath it.

Special Note: Remember, don't worry about line breaks in your HTML; lay it out in a manner that allows you to easily read when coding - they won't appear on your page within any browser. If you need to create a line break in your copy, then you can try the following:

Example:

This is my first line,<br>
And here is the next line.


The line break <br> causes the preceeding line of text to appear directly beneath the first, unlike paragraph <p> which forces a new paragraph.

Conclusion


Whether you are using line breaks or paragraphs, the overall goal is to render your copy in a form that will engage the visitor. Reading one continuous line of text is definately to be avoided.


Credits & Links

Article written by James Middleton - www.webdesign-4-beginners.co.uk.

Information for Publishers

You are free to republish this article, provided you retain all hyperlinks as active in the above credits.

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