The most basic task that HTML performs is manipulating blocks of text. A block can be a whole page, a paragraph, a sentence, or a single word.

When working with text probably the most common tag you'll use is the paragraph tag. Technically <P> is a container tag, requiring a matching </P> tag, but since all browsers are programmed to see a new <P> tag as closing the previous <P>, many people get lazy and leave the closing tag off. This isn't really a good idea, since the specification for future versions of HTML requires the closing tag - and if you have a bunch of pages in which you've left it off, you'll have one huge job to correct them. Additionally, Cascading Style Sheets reqires the closing tag. So get in the habit of using both the opening and closing paragraph tag.

<P> inserts a paragraph break in the page, and begins the next line of text against the left margin two lines beneath the current text.

<P> can take ALIGN as an attribute, with values of RIGHT, LEFT (the default) or CENTER, but if you use the attribute you *must* use a closing tag.

Since browsers don't see line breaks or returns in the source code, if you want to force a new line, without starting a new paragraph, or you're forcing a line break between images, use the <BR> tag. <BR> can take the CLEAR attribute, which forces the browser to move down the page to start the new line below any other images or data that may be in the same line. The allowed values for CLEAR are RIGHT, LEFT and ALL.

Sometimes you want to center something that isn't contained in a paragraph, or a bunch of elements together. Use the <CENTER> tag. <CENTER> is a container tag, and everything inside it will be centered on the same line. It takes no attributes, and can hold other active tags.

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