Shadowing Practice: HTML Tag Text Basics | HTML5 Element Text Tutorial - Learn English Speaking with Video

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Hello and welcome.

Hi, I'm Dave.

This tutorial is part of a beginner's HTML series.

I'll be using the Chrome web browser, the Visual Studio Code editor, and the live server extension for Visual Studio Code to view the web page.

There are links to these tools, starter code files, and all resources in the description below.

Let's look at the basics of creating text content on a web page.

Now, web pages are a lot like essays or even a newspaper where they have headings and usually paragraphs of text,

or at least a sentence or two of text describing something afterwards.

So we see our paragraph element here and our H1 heading here.

Much of the text content on a web page will be made up of headings and paragraphs.

Now, headings have a hierarchy,

and that means we'll start out with only one H1 on the page and each page should only have one H1.

But after that, we can have subtopics.

So here I'm going to press

Shift Alt and the down arrow.

Again, I'm using Windows.

It may be different for you on Mac or Linux, but I just copied a line down.

So now I have two H1s, but I'm going to change this by typing H2 over that H1.

And notice how the ending tag immediately changed here in Visual Studio Code as well.

So that's helpful.

Now, this is a subtopic for the page.

So imagine this being the title of your essay or the big headline in a newspaper.

And then we have subtopics.

So for H2, I'm going to type something different.

Let's go with, I'm ready to learn HTML.

And now we can have a paragraph about that.

And so we do, at least we have a sentence.

This is my first web page.

Now I'm going to highlight this subheading, H2 and the paragraph.

And once again, I'm going to press

Shift Alt and the down arrow.

And it copies both lines down for me.

And I'll add an extra blank line here.

And I'm going to change this second H2 into an H3.

Now I'll use lowercase.

There we go.

Now we could have more than one H2 on the page.

But I wanted to show how you could have a subtopic under our subtopic.

So we have the title for our essay, and then we have an area of discussion that we've added an H2 as the heading for.

And now under this area of discussion, we could have further subtopics, and this is how we now have an H3.

So now instead of my first web page or I'm ready to learn HTML, let's change this to my daily schedule.

So this will discuss our schedule for learning HTML.

and then we can just say something about I'm going to tell you how

or let me tell you how I

and I'll just put some dots there for now just we'll expand on

that later if we want to but really what I'm showing is this hierarchy

and it's also important not just visually let me go ahead

and save this by pressing ctrl s or remember you can go to the file menu and choose save

visually we see

that it's naturally formatted larger on the page with the h1 than it is the h2

and then the h3 is even smaller than the h2

but we can change all of

that with css in the future css will really style how our web page looks

but what is important is we can quickly visually tell the headers apart right now

and when a screen reader

or other assistive technology looks at our code

then it can navigate the code through the headers of what is important here the header hierarchy

and that's why it's

so important to organize your page the headers actually give semantic meaning saying

this is the main topic this is a subtopic under the main topic

and this is a subtopic under the higher subtopic in the hierarchy

so headers do have semantic importance and that means giving meaning to our content

and of course then our paragraphs can just have whatever details

we want to add about those subtopics as well now even though we've created a little separation in our code

when we look at our page we just see line space line space

and we don't have a good visual separation i'm going to add an element

that doesn't really provide any semantic meaning

but visually it helps us on the page and

that is a horizontal rule element

and it's just added like this there is no closing tag for the horizontal rule

and then i'm going to add another one after our final subtopic discussion here so we can add something else underneath that

And so now let's save and look what the horizontal rule adds to the page.

now we have lines going across the page

and those are called horizontal rules so we have our main heading

and now we have our subtopic and i left the h3 in here

because it's a subtopic of this topic so now we can go ahead

and i'm going to highlight the h2 and the h3 ctrl c to copy

come down further on the page and paste and i'll save just so we can see what happens

Now we have two different subtopic sections and we still have our top hello world.

So you could picture this more like an essay page.

And of course, these could be paragraphs that have more text.

Or you could picture this more like a newspaper.

And then we would have an article here and an article here in our heading at the top.

This is also a good time to discuss white space.

So if I just press the space bar and add all these extra spaces to the page, if I save

Visual Studio Code, it is already going to probably reformat this.

But what is important to know when I save, you'll see, yes, it changed and it just went back and only left one space,

is web pages or HTML do not honor all those spaces you might add with a space bar.

It's called white space collapsing.

And so we can space many lines, but it won't really be represented on the page.

That is not how we add extra space in HTML.

So again, recognize white space collapsing that it will not last.

Now, something we can do is what's called a line break.

And that can be inserted inside a paragraph element.

So now I'll put, let me tell you how, and then I'm going to return remember we don't have to have the opening

and closing tags on the same line for an element we can nest other elements inside of an element

so I'm going to put a break and that stands for line break

and then I'll put three dots

and I'll say let me tell you how I learn more about web dev

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and a period that looks good and now we can put another break

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and I'll just put three more dots and say I plan out my schedule

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and one more line break the three dots of course are not required it's just what I'm adding here

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and then I'll say I use resources from MDN

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which previously we discussed and

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when I showed the definition of HTML we were looking at the Mozilla Developer Network and that's what MDN is.

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So now if we save this file you can see we've got line breaks

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and we're showing each of these details on separate lines.

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Okay let's scroll down and change some of our second topic now.

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So instead of I'm ready to learn HTML let's change our second subtopic to I am let me capitalize

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that I am also planning a vacation

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and now we can put some details about

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that vacation in the paragraph underneath this subtopic

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and I'll say I've been working hard and really need a getaway period

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and let's see if we want to add anything underneath that yep

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Let's add one more sentence.

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And what I'm going to do once again is shift alt

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and the down arrow and Visual Studio Code will copy that line down.

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So now we can just change the sentence here and I'll say I live in Kansas.

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So I want to visit a beach.

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Kansas is nowhere near the ocean.

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So that sounds pretty good.

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So let's save that and now we can see our subtopic here changed

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and we have a couple of sentences about planning the vacation

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now let's change the my daily schedule subtopic at the h3 to places I'd like to visit

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and I guess I could capitalize

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that L on like there we go places I'd like to visit

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and now I'll highlight that paragraph and say I've heard good things about the Caribbean.

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Sounds like they have warm water and fun islands to visit.

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Okay, so now we've got some extra details here and we can have more than one subtopic here.

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So let's go ahead and do that.

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Again, shift alt and the down arrow to copy that.

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And places I want to avoid could be our next one.

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So places I want to avoid.

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And here we can put anywhere cold.

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No way with an exclamation mark.

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Okay.

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So now we've got some extra detail here in our second area and this will allow me

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to go ahead and show you the difference between block level elements and inline elements.

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What we've been working with here are block level elements.

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Notice with every paragraph and every heading, they start on a new line.

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That is a block level element.

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It creates space around it, which of course can be formatted in the future with CSS,

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but it does not allow you to put another paragraph inside of a header

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or a paragraph without creating that new line that space

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so there will be a return essentially in your content

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when you're using a block level element but

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when you use an inline element that doesn't happen

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so let's look at a couple of these first of all we can say I've been working really hard

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and I've been working hard and really need a getaway let's emphasize

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that really need a getaway and one inline element

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that we can do that with is em and

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that stands for emphasis that provides some semantic meaning once again

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so now a screen reader or other assistive technology

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or are just our browser overall knows we're emphasizing this really need a getaway

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so let's save

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and notice really need a getaway is italicized now we're not using

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it for the italicized text again the formatting will come later with css

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but that is just the natural behavior of using the emphasis

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element as we wrap our text but it provides

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that meaning now what if we really want to emphasize

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that text it has a strong meaning to us like our no way here

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we don't want to go anywhere cold well there is a strong element we can use for

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that and here let me grab the ending tag and put it at the end of our no way.

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And now I'll save and notice it got just a little bit bigger

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and bolder here as far as the natural formatting of the strong element.

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But again, this is an inline element.

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It's inside the paragraph.

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It did not create a break in the line.

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It did not create any extra space around it.

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So these are inline level elements and the other elements such as the header

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and the paragraph we've been working with are block level elements.

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Another type of content we can add to our page are HTML entities.

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So they are things that are not really the normal text we would type out.

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What, for example, if we wanted to show a less than or a greater than symbol on our page?

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Right now, HTML interprets those as we're starting or ending a tag,

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so we can't just easily put one of those on the page likewise there are some other symbols

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or remember when i talked about white space collapsing

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if we need a little bit of extra space there's an html entity for

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that so i want to indent these three lines with a little bit of space

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and i can use the html entity oh i still need the closing

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there here we go an ampersand is usually what starts out an HTML entity

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and now I'll type in B SP and a semicolon notice

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Visual Studio code recognizes that right away and

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if I save I have spaced this line over just a little bit

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now I can add more than one of those if I want

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so I'm going to copy that and I'm going to add two more

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and now save and our line is over even a little further

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so I will go ahead and select all three of these

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and I'm going to paste them right after the line break on each line and save.

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And now we have indented with some extra space all three of these lines with these HTML entities that create space.

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But as I mentioned, there are other HTML entities as well.

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So let's scroll down here to the bottom of our page.

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And after this last topic, let's add another HR

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and now we'll type and LT and a semicolon and

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that stands for less than so

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if we save now look

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we have a less than symbol underneath the final horizontal rule here at the bottom of the page

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I'm going to go ahead and copy that and paste two more

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and then I'm going to add ampersand and copy with a semicolon, and that will be the copyright symbol.

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Then I'll just put my name.

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You can put yours, and then I'm going to add ampersand GT for greater than and a semicolon,

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and once again, I'll copy that and paste two more.

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Now, if we save, you can see we've got our three less than symbols we've got a copyright symbol then your name

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or my name and then three greater than symbols, and we're using HTML entities to create those.

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I'll provide a link to a list of HTML entity codes in the resources for this tutorial.

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You may have noticed we've got a couple of abbreviations on our page.

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We have the abbreviation for Kansas, which is KS, and we also have the acronym or abbreviation for the Mozilla Developer Network here on our page.

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So let's go ahead and add another inline level element and

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that can help us with our abbreviations and that is abbr

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but it doesn't really do it by itself i'm going to go ahead

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and select mdn cut it and paste it here in the middle of the element

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and this won't really provide anything we also need to add the attribute title here

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I can put the full text Mozilla developer network and

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save and now when we look at our page it has some dots underneath MDN

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if we mouse over we get a tooltip

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that says Mozilla developer network now it's important to realize this tooltip will not really be available to screen reader

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and assistive technology.

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So we don't want anything super important for the understanding of the meaning of the page to be in there.

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So if we are using abbreviation, it's a nice thing to have, but it is really not accessible to all assistive technology.

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So you can't have anything in there that the page really depends on

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because some of the people accessing the page may not be able to read

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or see the information

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that you provide here inside the title attribute of the abbreviation element let's go ahead

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and add that abbreviation element for kansas as well

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so abbr and then title and i'll spell the state name kansas

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and then i can go ahead and double click on kansas control x to cut

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and i'm going to paste it with control v right inside the element save

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and now dots are under the ks here on the page

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and if i mouse over we get a tooltip

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that says kansas let's put another paragraph under places i'd like to visit

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and i'll put i can just type p

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and press tab as well there we go and now i'll type i've heard good things about going here with a colon.

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And now I'm going to add an address element.

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And we can put a location inside of this address element.

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And it tells the browser that this is an address or a specific location.

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So I'm just going to paste this in because you don't need to see me type all of this.

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And I might easily have a typo here.

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This is Margaritaville Island in Cancun.

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It sounds like a great place for a vacation.

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Notice we've got a line break element after each line except the last line.

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And if we save this and look at the page, you can see how the browser handles this.

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It is just three lines of text.

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It is all italicized by default.

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And the browser knows that this is an address.

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And once again, so would assistive technology.

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So an address element does provide some semantic meaning as well to the content within

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it now before we finish this lesson about content

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there's one other thing we can add to our code now we won't see it on the page

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but it is important to us and this is an HTML comment and so now you can see

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Visual Studio Code colored this differently at least with the theme

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that I'm using

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and we can leave a note for ourselves inside of our code

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now notice this will not be on the page

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but I will show you how the public can see it

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so you don't want to put anything in here

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that you don't expect the public to be able to read i'll put a to -do

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which is a common use and i'll just put add more places

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so it's a reminder to me to add more places to the list of places i want to avoid

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and we save that

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and it doesn't show on the page it's just a reminder in the code

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or a note to yourself inside of the code

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but I will show you how the public can see this

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if we right click and choose inspect that works

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or you can also press control you either way will show your source code

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now notice we've got a comment in here

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that says add more places it's not visible on the web page itself

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but it is visible in the source code again

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you can press control you to view this now notice live server also injected a comment here and it injected some JavaScript.

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So when we look at the overall source code of what is live, we're seeing more than we even had.

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But this is a comment, once again, that is not seen on the page.

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And live server is using a script element that we do not see on the page either.

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And that can contain JavaScript, for example. So

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just to let you know

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if you leave a note for yourself it can be viewed by others

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and finally now

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that we've added all of this html content to our page

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we once again should go to the validator markup validation service from w3c to check our file to see

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if it is valid html or

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if we have any mistakes choose validate by file upload

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and then click choose file i'm going to have to probably go to a different folder from the one

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that I checked last.

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So I'll go to HTML course, lesson three, which is the file we are working with,

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choose my index .html, and open that here with the validator.

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Now it has the index .html file uploaded, and we can click check, and we'll see if we have valid HTML.

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So this is valid.

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It's green, document checking completed, no errors or warnings to show.

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If you have errors or warnings, it should point out exactly where that error is, and you can fix that in your HTML.

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Remember to keep striving for progress over perfection, and a little progress every day will go a very long way.

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Please give this video a like if it's helped you, and thank you for watching and subscribing.

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You're helping my channel grow.

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Have a great day, and let's write more code together very soon.

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This speaking lesson is built on the video “HTML Tag Text Basics”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: page, element, html, add, code. This video has 291 sentences and 3496 words to shadow. The speech runs for 21:19. The speaker talks at a natural 164 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 82% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.

Key vocabulary in this video

15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
element noun	/ˈɛləmənt/	One of the simplest or essential parts or principles of which anything consists, or upon which the constitution or fundamental powers of anything are based.
paragraph noun	/ˈpæɹəɡɹæf/	A passage in text that starts on a new line, the first line sometimes being indented, and usually marks a change of topic.
entity noun	/ˈɛn.tə.ti/ [-tʰi]	That which has a distinct existence as an individual unit, often used for organizations which have no physical form.
symbol noun	/ˈsɪmbəl/	A character or glyph representing an idea, concept or object.
pasta noun	/ˈpɑ.stə/	Dough made from wheat and water and sometimes mixed with egg and formed into various shapes; often sold in dried form and typically boiled for eating.
header noun	/ˈhɛdɚ/	The upper portion of a page (or other) layout.
dot noun	/dɑt/	A small, round spot.
topic noun	/ˈtɑpɪk/	A subject; a theme; a category or general area of interest.
underneath adverb	/ˌʌndɚˈniθ/	Below; in a place beneath.
horizontal adjective	/ˌhoɹəˈzɑn.təl/	Perpendicular to the vertical; parallel to the plane of the horizon; level, flat.
browser noun	/ˈbɹaʊ.zəɹ/	One who or which browses.
getaway noun		A means of escape.
format noun	/ˈfɔːɹ.mæt/	The layout of a publication or document.
vacation noun	/veɪˈkeɪ.ʃən/	An extended trip or journey away from home for rest or pleasure.
essay noun	/ˈɛs.eɪ/	A written composition of moderate length, exploring a particular issue or subject.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
go ahead verb	/ˌɡoʊ əˈhɛd/	To proceed with; to begin.
come down verb		To descend, fall down, collapse.
go back verb		To return to a place or state after having been there at a previous time.
plan out verb		to plan, organize, make a plan for something
point out verb		To identify among a group of similar subjects, or in a scene where the subject might not be readily seen or noticed, with a gesture of the body.
start out verb		To emerge suddenly; to jump out.

Sentences worth repeating

Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:

Let's add one more sentence.
Then I'll just put my name.
You're helping my channel grow.

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on	I've been working · we've been working
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	will be made · are called · be represented
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	we've added · we've created · I've heard
Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing	Kansas, which is · three, which is

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 106 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, I'll, we've. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “sh” and “zh” sounds: vacation /veɪˈkeɪ.ʃən/, separation /ˌsɛp.əˈɹeɪ.ʃən/, extension /ɪkˈstɛnʃən/, essentially /ɪˈsɛnʃəli/, perfection /pɚˈfɛk.ʃən/
Long words — get the stress right: entity /ˈɛn.tə.ti/ [-tʰi], horizontal /ˌhoɹəˈzɑn.təl/, developer /dɪˈvɛləpɚ/, hierarchy /ˈhaɪ.ə.ɹɑː(ɹ).ki/, visually /ˈvɪzju.əli/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like element, paragraph, entity.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

Shadowing Practice: HTML Tag Text Basics | HTML5 Element Text Tutorial - Learn English Speaking with Video

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

Key vocabulary in this video

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Sentences worth repeating

Grammar in this video

Pronunciation to watch

How to practise with this video

What is the Shadowing Technique?