Basic Tags
Wondering what else goes into your HTML document? Every HTML document needs a certain amount of tags in order for it to work. You already know that the first and last tags your file needs are the HTML tags to tell your web browser where the HTML in your document begins and ends:
<html>
</html>
Now you need to put in a pair of head tags. These tags hold all of the document’s header information, such as the title of the document and such. But, you don’t have to worry about that. Just know that you need to put in a pair of head tags, and know that any information put here is not seen by the web browser:
<html>
<head>
</head>
</html>
Speaking of a title, let’s go ahead and put in the title tags, as well as the name you want to give to your document. Whatever falls between the title tags will be the title of the document. Then, when anyone views your web page, people will see the title displayed in the title bar located in the upper left hand corner of the web browser. For instance, look up in your browser window now and you’ll see that the title of this web page is called Basic Tags. Let’s show you an example of how to write the tag. In this instance I am going to use "My First Web Page" as the title:
<html>
<head>
<title>Learning HTML </title>
</head>
</html>
Now, here is the absolute last pair of basic tags that an HTML document needs – the body tags. This pair of tags is the most important because in-between these two tags is where you will put the all the stuff (text, links, graphics, etc.) that you want to be displayed in the window by the web browser:
<html>
<head>
<title>Learning HTML</title>
</head>
<body>
all your stuff will go here
</body>
</html>
This is what your file will look like once you put it all together:
Pretty blah looking, isn’t it! Don’t worry, you are on your way to learning about all the things that can go between the body tags. This is just your bare-bones HTML document. It contains nothing but the required minimum tags. But, hey, you are going to learn some more. Let’s keep going. 
This resource originally created by Deborah Dunk.
Revised and edited by Michael Galloway in 2005 & in 2006.