HTML is the lingua franca for publishing hypertext on the World Wide Web. It is a non-proprietary format based upon SGML, and can be created and processed by a wide range of tools, from simple plain text editors - you type it in from scratch- to sophisticated WYSIWYG authoring tools. HTML uses tags such as <h1> and </h1> to structure text into headings, paragraphs, lists, hypertext links etc. Here is a 10-minute guide for newcomers to HTML. W3C's statement of direction for HTML is given on the HTML Activity Statement. See also the page on our work on the next generation of Web forms, and the section on Web history.