Older style elements

Usually, we will use CSS styles to affect the appearance of our pages. Before CSS was created, HTML elemens and attributes were used that controlled the apperance of the page. There are also two sets of older HTML elements, that can be used to change the appearance of text in our pages. These older elements are refered to as Logical Style Tags and Physical Style Tags.

Select a logical tag that describes what your text is used for. The browser will select an appropriate appearance for that type of text usage.
These are all container element, with an opening tag and a closing tag.
These are all in-line elements.
Logical tags include:

• abbr - used to specify a term and its abvbrevation
• cite - a citation
• code - some programming code
• dfn - a definition
• em - important text to be emphasized
• kbd - text looking it was typed on an old manual typewriter
• samp - a sample
• strong - very important text to be strongly emphasized
• var - defines a variable

Select a physical tag that describes what you want your text to look like. The browser will select an appropriate appearance that looks like what you requested.
These are all container elements, with an opening tag and a closing tag.
All these are also in-line elements.
Physical tags include:

• b - bold face
• i - italic
• sup - a superscript such as X²
• sub - a subscript such as H₂O
• kbd - text looking like it was typed from a keyboard into Notepad
• small - smaller
• u - underline

The strike tag is officially deprecated, and is no longer supported.