HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is the foundational markup language of the World Wide Web, created by Tim Berners-Lee in 1991, that defines the structure and content of web pages through a system of elements enclosed in angle-bracket tags. HTML provides the semantic framework for organizing information on the web, using tags like

for headings,

for paragraphs, for hyperlinks, for images,

for tabular data, and

for user input. These elements create a hierarchical document structure called the Document Object Model (DOM) that web browsers parse and render into the visual pages users see and interact with. HTML is a declarative language, meaning developers describe what content should appear and how it should be structured rather than specifying how to display it—the actual visual presentation is handled by CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), while interactive behavior is managed by JavaScript. This separation of concerns allows HTML to focus purely on semantic meaning and content structure, making web pages accessible to screen readers, search engines, and various devices.

Modern HTML (currently HTML5, standardized by the W3C and WHATWG) has evolved far beyond simple text formatting to support rich multimedia content, complex web applications, and interactive experiences without requiring plugins. HTML5 introduced semantic elements like

,