Gloria writes:

Subject: Essential HTML Skills

This is exactly what I have needed, thank you Chris!

Claudia writes:

Subject: Essential HTML Skills for Article Authors

This is great! I knew about bold and italic, but didn't know how to make lists. This will dress up the articles that I write.

Barbara Rose, Ph.D. writes:

Subject: Awesome Guidance

Wow Chris,

Thank you so much for creating this HTML article guide. I never knew what you wrote and am truly grateful to you for sharing this. Deserves 10 stars!

Benn Brown writes:

Subject: Nice tips for getting an article started

Thanks for the really helpful info. Nice tips for getting an article started. html is just the opening to a very long rabbit hole

Rex M Rogers, Ph.D. writes:

Subject: HTML for Dummies?

Finally, somebody wrote a piece about HTML that makes sense to me. I'm a bit of a wordsmith, not a code-meister. But the HTML code knowledge I've gained from this article will help me communicate my words better online. Thanks.

Becky Esker writes:

Subject: HTML skills - 7 Tips

These are great tips also for anyone who uses Constant Contact, the eblast website.

It allows you to customize your eblasts especially if you have use a customized layout different from the standard templates.

ethel writes:

Subject: Great tips

Thanks for sharing HTML Guidance. Allow customize my articles the way I want to be.

Jeff Hamilton writes:

Subject: Basic HTML for writers

All very useful, thank you, except for two things.

In Item #1 you have put in a do not follow tag.

That means that anyone who might be trying to improve their page rank on the search engines would not succeed, because that tag basically says NOT to look at the link. (You would do that if you did not want to bleed page rank at your site to lesser pages on your site, like for example your "housekeeping pages", about us, contact us, and so forth.

Therefore, take out the rel="nofollow" from the link if you are linking to your site in order to enhance your visibility.

I would also say use target="_blank" to open the link in a new browser window, rather than "new" as you have. Browsers of all types will understand it easily.

Freida writes:

Subject: What is HTML, exactly?

Hello Chris: Thanks for the article - it's helpful. However, I would have found it even more valuable if you started off with a brief definition of what, exactly, HTML is/means/is all about. After reading your clearly laid out suggestions, I still was not clear about HTML.

Also are you saying, for example, that when I submit an article to Ezine, for my article, instead of just using Words bullet pointing format for each listed item, I'd use your suggested coding? As you can see, I'm still not 100% clear!

Jeff Hamilton writes:

Subject: HTML explanation for Freida

HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language and is the language of the internet. All pages are coded according to this standard, in one form or another.

No, you would NOT want to go straight from WORD to the internet page you are trying to create. The reason why is that a lot of characters that Word puts in as standard, like curly quotes or long em dashes would look like strange characters on the internet. If you have ever received a weird looking email with characters you would not recognize, that would probably be why.

One solution is to SAVE AS in your document and ask Word to create a Webpage, but then you would not paste that in either, you would paste in the Source Code of the webpage, which you would find by going to the VIEW menu, and then down to the bottom choice, VIEW SOURCE, and copy and then pasting it into the window.

But better still, you can learn html quickly enough. SAVE AS plain text, then make it look pretty. To start the change in text, use B is bold, I is italic, and you would put them in between < and > (the sideways arrows above the comma and full stop if you were to hold down the shift key. To end the bold, put a / in front, and it will go back to regular writing. This is bold. You are talking about bullets formatting so that is li, or list item, again between the two arrows, and then you would close it as well.

If you wanted the list to indent nicely the way it does in word, use ul or ol, ul will give you bullets, ol is ordered list and would give you numbers. Then close that character too, whichever one you chose. To give you a blank line or carriage return, use br between the two arrows, which stands for break.

This is sort of long winded because this site will change my characters as I am trying to explain them to you. So For great quick lessons which will show you what I mean, try: http://www.w3schools.com/html/DEFAULT.asp

The characters are very simple to learn, really, but can make a big difference to your readers, for example, making your subheading bold, making your paragraphs look nice and not all crowded together, and as you say, using bullets.

Hope this helps!

Tony writes:

Subject: HTML article

Nice job, clear and very helpful. How about another seven tips soon?