Help with HTML

Clients often request HTML in their orders, which can be pretty intimidating if you haven't done it before. Usually, a textbox will have the options to format your work with just the press of a couple buttons, but sometimes, you have to know how to do it from scratch. Don't worry! With the proper resources, it's actually a lot easier than it looks. 

What is HTML Exactly?

HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language, and it's a coding language that communicates to a website how it should look. This is how you get headers, bold text, bullet points, and various other elements you see on web pages. On Textbroker, for the most part, you'll be using it to format your text according to how the client wants.

Applying HTML to Your Work

When you want to apply HTML to a certain chunk of text, you'll add what we call tags on either side of it. How you type it can affect whether it works or not, so be sure you're creating the tags correctly! Here's what it would look like to make something bold:

Correct: <strong> Hello! </strong>
Incorrect: < strong > Hello! < /strong >
Result: Hello!

Note that the only difference in the incorrect one is having spaces within the angle brackets. This is the most common mistake we see, and it does mean that your tag won't work. You'll also need the slash in the second tag in order to close it. This ensures that the text that comes after won't be formatted as well.

The Most Common Tags on Textbroker: 

For the most part, you'll have the tools you need to add HTML automatically - like the bold button on a Word document. Textbroker has some of these tools too, but it's good to know the tags just in case something glitches.

Headers: <h1>, <h2>, <h3>
How it looks:
<h1> This is a title! </h1>
<h2> This is a smaller title! </h2>
<h3> This is a tiny title! </h3>

Results:
This is a title!
This is a smaller title!
This is a tiny title!

Bold: <strong>
How it looks:
<strong> I'm eye-catching! </strong>

Result:
I'm eye-catching!

Italics: <em>
How it looks:
<em> I'm emphasized! </em>

Result:
I'm emphasized!

Underline: <u>
How it looks:
<u> I'm important! </u>

Result:
I'm important!

Links: < a href="…" >
Creating hyperlinks looks a bit more complicated, but it's still not too bad! Make sure that the URL you want to link to goes in the quotation marks. Then, your anchor text (how you want to link to appear) goes between the two tags. You don't need to repeat the "href=" part in the closing tag.

How it looks:
<a href="https://textbroker.com"> Our website! </a>

Result:
Our website!

There are, of course, plenty more tags out there that can do a variety of things; we've only covered the most common. If you need help figuring out the proper HTML for your work, there are plenty of resources out there that you can search for, including this handy HTML Checker, but you can also always reach out to us! We're pretty good with HTML, so we can point you in the right direction if you're having trouble.