HTML · HyperText Markup Language
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HTML is the language that gives a web page its structure and content — the headings, paragraphs, links, images, and lists. Think of it as the skeleton of the page: it decides what's there and what each piece is, but not yet how any of it looks.
You build a page out of tags — little labels wrapped in angle brackets that come in pairs. <h1>…</h1> marks a big heading, <p>…</p> a paragraph, <a href="…">…</a> a link. The browser reads these tags and turns them into the page you see.
On its own, raw HTML looks plain — black text on a white background. That's by design: HTML handles the bones, CSS adds the looks, and JavaScript adds the behavior. Together they make every page on the web.
<h1>Hello, world</h1> <p>This is a paragraph with a <a href="/about">link</a>.</p>
A heading, a paragraph, and a link — that's a real (if tiny) web page.
HTML isn't a programming language — there are no variables or logic, just structure. The 'markup' part means you're marking up text to say what each piece is.