HTML

Standard for structuring and describing a document on the World Wide Web. The HTML standard provides labels for constituent parts of a document (for example headings and paragraphs) and permits the inclusion of images, sounds, and ‘hyperlinks’ to other documents. A browser program is then used to convert this information into a graphical document on-screen. The specifications for HTML version 4, called Dynamic HTML, were adopted at the end of 1997.

HTML is a specific example of SGML (standard generalized markup language, the international standard for text encoding). As such it is not a rigid standard but is constantly being improved to incorporate new features and allow greater freedom of design.