HTML Text Formatting

HTML provides special tags to format text — to make it bold, italic, underlined, and more. These tags give text meaning and visual style.

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Bold Text — <b> and <strong>

Both tags make text bold, but they have different semantic meanings:

<b>This text is bold (no extra meaning).</b>
<strong>This text is important (semantic bold).</strong>

Tag	Meaning	Rendered As
<b>	Bold — visual only, no semantic meaning	Bold text
<strong>	Strong importance — screen readers emphasize this	Strong text

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Italic Text — <i> and <em>

<i>This text is italic (visual only).</i>
<em>This text is emphasized (semantic italic).</em>

Tag	Meaning	Rendered As
<i>	Italic — visual only (e.g. technical terms)	Italic text
<em>	Emphasis — screen readers stress this word	Emphasized text

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Underlined Text — <u>

<u>This text is underlined.</u>

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Strikethrough Text — <s> and <del>

<s>This text is no longer accurate.</s>
<del>This text has been deleted.</del>

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Inserted Text — <ins>

The <ins> tag marks text that has been inserted into a document (shown with underline):

<p>My favorite color is <del>blue</del> <ins>red</ins>.</p>

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Highlighted Text — <mark>

<p>Do not forget to <mark>buy milk</mark> today.</p>

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Superscript — <sup>

Superscript text appears half a character above the normal line — used for footnotes, exponents, ordinals:

<p>2<sup>10</sup> = 1024</p>
<p>The 1<sup>st</sup> of January</p>

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Subscript — <sub>

Subscript text appears half a character below the normal line — used in chemical formulas:

<p>H<sub>2</sub>O (Water)</p>
<p>CO<sub>2</sub> (Carbon Dioxide)</p>

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Small Text — <small>

<p>Normal text. <small>This is small text.</small></p>

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Quick Reference — All Formatting Tags

Tag	Description	Example Output
<b>	Bold (visual)	Bold
<strong>	Important/bold (semantic)	Strong
<i>	Italic (visual)	Italic
<em>	Emphasized/italic (semantic)	Emphasised
<u>	Underline	Underline
<s>	Strikethrough (inaccurate)	Strikethrough
<del>	Deleted text	Deleted
<ins>	Inserted text	Inserted
<mark>	Highlighted text	Highlighted
<sup>	Superscript	210
<sub>	Subscript	H2O
<small>	Smaller text	Small text