Adding Bold and Italic to HTML

HTML allows us to add bold and italic to any text in a document. To do this we need to wrap the text in <b> elements for bold and <i> elements for italics.

Here is an example of adding bold and italic to a paragraph of text.

<p>HTML allows us to add <b>bold</b> to any text that we want to
 <b>emphasize.</b>.  We can also add <i>italic</i> text or a 
 combination of both <b><i>bold and italic</i></b>.
</p>

Which will render like this:

HTML allows us to add bold to any text that we want to emphasize.. We can also add italic text or a combination of both bold and italic elements turned on.

Warning

You must remember to close the bold and italic markup. They don't just apply to a single world. Make sure you close the elements in the reverse order that you added them.

Other Inline Elements

There are two other interesting inline elements that you might want to use. One is for creating superscripts and one is for subscripts.

Superscripts

To make text appear shifted up we use the <sub> tag. Here we use it in a mathematical formula to show an exponent:

<p>y = x<sup>2</sup> + 2x + 1<p>

which will render:

y = x² + 2x + 1

You can also use some greek letters if you know how to encode them. Here the greek letter "pi" is references using π

<p>The formula:<br/>
   e<sup>i&pi;</sup>= -1<br/>
is one of the most elegant formulas in mathematics
</p>

The formula:
e^iπ= -1
is one of the most elegant formulas in mathematics

Subscripts

<p>The chemical formula for water is
   H<sub>2</sub>O
</p>

The chemical formula for water is H₂O

<p>The chemical formula for caffeine is
   C<sub>8</sub>H<sub>10</sub>N<sub>4</sub>O<sub>2</sub>
</p>

The chemical formula for caffeine is C₈H₁₀N₄O₂