2.2 The Basic Structure of Every HTML Page

Basic HTML Document Structure

<!DOCTYPE html>

<html lang="en">

  <head>

    <meta charset="UTF-8">

    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">

    <title>My First Newgate University Web Page</title>

  </head>

  <body>

    <!-- Everything the user sees goes here -->

    <h1>Welcome to Newgate University Minna</h1>

    <p>This is my very first web page!</p>

  </body>

</html>

Tag / Element

Purpose

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>

Tells the browser this is an HTML5 document

Always the very first line

<html>

The root element — wraps everything

<html lang="en">...</html>

<head>

Contains invisible information about the page (title, metadata, links)

<head>...</head>

<meta charset>

Sets character encoding — required for special characters (ó, é, etc.)

<meta charset="UTF-8">

<title>

The text shown on the browser tab

<title>Newgate University</title>

<body>

All visible content goes here

<body>...</body>

<!-- comment -->

A note for developers — not shown to users

<!-- This is a note -->