In contrast, HTML says, this thing is a paragraph, this thing is a header, this text should be emphasized. Consider the difference. Of course, one thing about HTML is that I, the author, lose a lot of control. I figure I have better things to do with my time than try to figure out how to tell your machine how to behave. Lazio of the html.police.
Some folks appear to have a misguided notion about the Web.
A particularly egregious example is contained in David Seigel's essay, Severe Tire Damage . I've written a brief rebuttal . I learned HTML itself from The Beginner's Guide to HTML , though this is now a bit dated. If you have any HTML questions, I recommend the authoritative source on the Web, W3C and their exhaustive set of documentation .