Formatting in HTML is a process of formatting text for a better look and feel, without using CSS.
HTML provides some tags that you can use to make some text on your web pages to appear differently than normal text. There are many formatting tags in HTML that are used to make text bold, italic or underlined etc.
HTML formatting tags are divided into two categories:
- Physical tag: These tags give a visual appearance to the text
- Logical tag: These tags give add some logical or semantic value to the text
Bold Text:
The <b> tags is a physical tag, which is used to bold the text written between <b>…</b>.
It does not add any extra importance.
Strong Text:
The <strong> tag is a logical tag, which tells the browser that the text is important.
It adds semantic importance to the text.
Difference between <strong> and <b> tag:
The <b> and <i> element types show the text in bold.
The difference is that the content in the <b>…</b> is bold for style purpose however the content in the <strong>…</strong> looks bold and has the emphasis.
Italic Text:
The <i> tag is a physical tag that is used to make the text italic.
It does not add any extra importance to the text.
Emphasized Text:
The <em> tag is a logical tag that is used to emphasize the text.
The content written in the <em>…..</em> tags is displayed in italic.
The <em> tag adds semantic importance to the text.
Difference between <em> tag and <i> tag:
Some people may get confused at seeing multiple elements that produce similar results.
<em> and <i> are common example of this.
<em> and <i> are common example of this.
By default both produce the same result, but its semantic meaning is different.
The difference is, <em> is used when you want to add more stress on a word or sentence and <i> is used when you don’t need to any stress on a word or phrase, but want it to be different from the words.
The difference is, <em> is used when you want to add more stress on a word or sentence and <i> is used when you don’t need to any stress on a word or phrase, but want it to be different from the words.
Underlined Text:
The <u> tag in HTML stands for underline and it’s used to underline the text.
The content written within <u>………</u> element, is shown in underlined text.
Subscript Text:
The <sub> tag is used to place subscripted text onto your websites.
The text which is written inside <sub>…</sub> appears half a character below the normal line.
The subscripted text can be used to write chemical formulas.
Superscript Text:
The <sup> tag is used to place superscripted text onto your websites.
The text which is written inside <sup>…</sup> appears half a character above the normal line.
The superscript text can be used to write footnotes and mathematical expressions.
Inserted Text:
The <ins> element in HTML is used to identify text, that has been inserted into a document.
Many times it is used with an <del> element which identifies deleted text replaced by text contained in the <ins> element.
Deleted Text:
The <del> tag in HTML is used to mark a part of the text which has been deleted from the document.
The deleted text is displayed as strikethrough text by the web browsers.
Smaller Text:
The <small> element in HTML is used to set small font size.
The text written inside< small>…</small> is displayed one size smaller than the surrounding text.
Larger Text:
The <big> tag in HTML is used to increase the size of the selected text.
The text written inside< big>…</big> is displayed one size larger than the surrounding text.
Note: You can also give more effects to text using CSS Text Effects.