I always find it useful to define what it is we are doing before we use it.
So what is HTML?
HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language
Is it an actual programming language? No
It's a markup language, which means it can be displayed a web browser, but not compiled. It's an important distinction because that means it doesn't go down to the machine code level. If you need more convincing, I am just priming you for a later discussion. Just think of HTML as a way to make stuff show up in the browser. So, let's try it out.
<html>
</html>
Notice the <html> starts with a < symbol and then ends with a > symbol. The tag, in this case, html goes between the two angle brackets. Then, as you see, the tag always ends with </html> This is called the closing tag.
So, move to the next section to see the underlying structure.