Headings and Paragraphs

HTML gives you six levels of headings, <h1> through <h6>, and one paragraph tag, <p>.

<h1>Main Page Title</h1>
<h2>Section Title</h2>
<h3>Subsection Title</h3>
<p>This is a regular paragraph of body text. Browsers automatically add space above and below paragraphs.</p>

<h1> should be used once per page for the main title — think of it as the headline of a newspaper article. <h2> through <h6> create a nested outline of sections and subsections, similar to how a book has chapters and sub-chapters.

A common mistake beginners make is choosing heading levels based on font size rather than meaning — for example using <h3> just because it "looks about right," while skipping <h2> entirely. This confuses both screen readers (which let users jump between headings) and search engines (which use heading structure to understand page hierarchy). Always pick heading levels for their semantic meaning, then use CSS to adjust how they look.

<p> is a block-level element, meaning it always starts on a new line and takes up the full available width by default — you cannot place two paragraphs side by side without additional CSS.