http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2650195/posts
Basically, HTML uses the little arrow keys.
You use this < > and whatever you stick in there is what you get.
If you put an i in for italics, you get italics
If you put an b in for bold, you get bold
If you put an s in for strike out, you get strikeout
If you put an u in for underline, you get underlined
If you put an blink in for blink, you get
If you put an p in for prargraphs, you get a paragraph.
You can do the same with colors by putting the words font color=#FF0000, for example and you'll get red
If you add a b designation you can get a bold red
For everything except paragraphs, you put the little arrows with the code before the word and after the word to tell the software to end it you put a / in front of the word. Paragraphs don't need to be ended the same way as everything else. If you forget to put in the /, it doesn't close the HTML and everything following it will be whatever it is you're trying to do, if that makes any sense.
So to start italics, you put in the i and to end the italics, you put in a /i.
You cannot leave any spaces in the thing, between the arrows and letters. It won't work.
It takes some experimenting and practice but is not hard to get down. Even someone who is as computer challenged as I can learn it eventually.
Thank you.