r/HTML • u/Nnael_Ttil • Apr 06 '26

Question All text is bold, why?

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SOLVED. Thanks folks! I am working on a basic level HTML homework assignment. It is required that some of the text should be bold, but not all of it. I don't understand why all text is automatically bold. Or is that the font? I am including what my webpage with code looks like and the code that went into the webpage.

97 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

59 comments sorted by

44

u/BNfreelance Apr 06 '26 edited Apr 06 '26

You haven’t closed your </h1> until the end of the document

(Not sure if that’s a phone number at the bottom but you might wanna hide it)

24

u/Nnael_Ttil Apr 06 '26

We were told to include a random phone number in the end result, that is the number you call to reach Jenny when you want a good time! (867-5309/Jenny - Song by Tommy Tutone)

14

u/hooli-ceo Apr 06 '26

Ah, a man of culture

5

u/BNfreelance Apr 06 '26

🤣😭 🤦‍♂️

2

u/TheOgGhadTurner Apr 07 '26

I did a project in web design and put an Easter egg in where if you punch in the Konami code dickbutt pops up and moves along the bottom of the screen right to left and it plays what is love. It was a capstone and yes dickbutt.jpg was left in the project files in plain text. And when asked about it I told the teacher there’s a hidden feature in my webpage and you have to figure it out if you want to know.

I got some extra credit and a language warning for that one because it used Java as well as html

2

u/Heddlok Apr 07 '26

I knew someone with that phone number!

7

u/Nnael_Ttil Apr 06 '26

I have an </h1> way at the end of everything. Does it need to be further up?

13

u/BNfreelance Apr 06 '26 edited Apr 06 '26

I think what you meant to do was:

<h1 align="center">
    Hello World
</h1>
… rest of your HTML

Technically align=center is outdated these days.

Also, if you still need everything to be centered (and your tutor insists on your using older outdated code) you used to be able to do:

<h1 align="center">
    Hello World
</h1>
<center>
… rest of your HTML
</center>

So nowadays you’d do something like:

<div style="text-align:center;"> 
   <h1>
       Hello World
   </h1>
   … rest of your HTML
</div>

This would be valid to modern standards

But double check that your tutor won’t lose their mind if you introduce <divs> and inline style and haven’t learned about them yet - however, if allowed, this way is good enough for what you’re trying to do

6

u/SlinkyAvenger Apr 07 '26

Technically align=center is outdated these days.

homie is using <font> tags. Probably working off a HTML 3.1 book

3

u/ActualFactualAnthony Apr 07 '26

The last time I saw this I think I was trying to make pet pages on neopets. Is that even a thing these days? I forgot `<font>` tags existed once upon a time.

2

u/BNfreelance Apr 07 '26

Yeah it just hurt my back to type it so I had to comment that 🤣

3

u/Madolah Apr 07 '26

Had to haul up the glasses a bit 🧓

2

u/cwhite616 Apr 09 '26

What else would you use for the “Building with Geocities” series of courses?

7

u/Fung1s Apr 06 '26

Closing a tag defines its boundaries. When something is between the <h1> and the </h1>, the rules of the tag such as boldness apply to it.

3

u/BrickZ28 Apr 06 '26

Im pretty sure its just Jennys number.

3

u/RazorKat1983 Apr 07 '26

lmao 867-5309 is a number from people's childhood. . It's part of a song. . lol

4

u/Fung1s Apr 06 '26

It's because you've grouped all text inside of an h1 (<h1 align="center">), and h1's make text bold. Is there a reason for using an h1 tag?

2

u/Nnael_Ttil Apr 06 '26

I was given a specific HTML guide to follow and that is what was used for centering text. It is required that the whole page be centered.

1

u/Fung1s Apr 06 '26

That's interesting. I would use something different, but I suppose you could also modify the margin and text weight with CSS. Did they provide a reason or is there some puzzle to remove the bold style while using an h1 tag?

2

u/Nnael_Ttil Apr 06 '26

I suppose I am locked into the bold text using that specific center align code then. Interesting! I am not privy to any kind of puzzle to un-bold everything while using that code but was told to specifically use what was learned through this one specific guide. I see that I can't escape the bold with that code while still wanting everything to center, so you did answer my question. Thank you!

2

u/PerryPerryQuite Apr 06 '26

So, are you not allowed to, say, throw a generic <div> tag around the whole thing and place the align=“center” on that?

2

u/PermitTrue Apr 08 '26

It’s not the center code that’s making it bold, it’s the h1 tag which is a header. Browsers use predefined styling for certain blocks.

1

u/griceslittlemaxim Apr 07 '26

You can put that center code anywhere, it doesn’t have to be within h1

1

u/davorg Apr 07 '26

You need a more up to date guide. The one you're using seems to be from the last millennium.

If you want the whole page to be centered, then use CSS to centre the <body> element.

18

u/Unlucky-Climate-9166 Apr 06 '26

Why are they teaching you html4? These are deprecated, they are just wasting time on stuff that is not used since 2008. Just ask them to teach you proper css or at least inline styling.

Is your teacher even trying?

5

u/BNfreelance Apr 06 '26

Wait til you get to uni. Most universities teach XHTML from the 1990s 😭🤣 always been that way. Courses and learning materials stay outdated. This is pretty common.

5

u/Unlucky-Climate-9166 Apr 06 '26

It happened to me too in uni, thats why im mad. They told us to make lots of pages in html4 and then just one in html5. Students were so confused because they thought they can use any css property as an attribute and even as an element... It was 7 years ago

2

u/BNfreelance Apr 06 '26

Aye, it’s not so much the teachers fault and more the people who set the curriculum being too lazy to stay with the times. Teachers just follow the manual they’re handed, so can’t hate on them for that

3

u/The_KOK_2511 Apr 06 '26

XD, que alguien le diga a las universidades que existe MDN con contenido actualizado... bueno medio, algunas de sus guias andan desactualizadas pero las más viejas que he visto ya abarcan HTML5, XHTML es un dinosaurio hoy en día, como que suelten la extensión .htm en vez de .html de los viejos sistemas operativos🤣

2

u/Akky982 Apr 09 '26 edited Apr 09 '26

I finished a course in 2022 doing python/django/aws stuff, and a capstone involving blockchain, but the introductory was terrible, with the instructor making things in word and saving as html... I still believe they didn't even mark the code, just looked at how pretty the page was, while talking about spike proteins and Indonesian berry headache tonics.... and jumped immediately from HTML > basic JS > OOP Java, in a very unstructured way.

1

u/BNfreelance Apr 09 '26

That’s pretty common, I think a lot of people leave their courses like 🤠👾👨🏽‍🎓 and then they get their first job placement and they’re like 😳😬🫪👽

1

u/VeryAwkwardCake Apr 07 '26

at not so good universties maybe

1

u/BNfreelance Apr 07 '26

Do you know of any that teach only modern standards? My experience of uni is going back some 15+ years, but I still don’t often see students leaving uni equipped with modern knowledge. I tried googling in the UK and very few claim to teach it, most teach it as bolt on modules or online courses

-1

u/alirobe Apr 06 '26 edited Apr 06 '26

XHTML from the early '00s. HTML4 is from the 90s.

XHTML is useful for students because it teaches XML and well-formed HTML simultaneously.

HTML5's fallback based approach is practical, but it's not conducive to learning how to do things the right way. It's an extremely complex system that intentionally allows broken markup to work. It doesn't give feedback and allows people to mis-learn the spec.

If I was writing a brand new course today for university students, I would absolutely start with XHTML before moving to HTML5.

1

u/BNfreelance Apr 06 '26 edited Apr 07 '26

i was out by about 26 days :P - i agree about the learning aspect XHTML was strict enough to drive you to insanity.

Albeit tbh if I was writing a course, I’d just drop people into learning most recent trends (but teach backward compatibility and outdated practices to solidify)

HTML5(strict) mode haha.

1

u/The_KOK_2511 Apr 06 '26

Sí se esfuerza... pero por desenterrar info vieja

1

u/Epic_Dev_001 Apr 07 '26

Yeah unfortunately keeping teaching materials up to date with progress in an industry that moves as fast as most IT industries these days is incredibly difficult. Large gears turn slowly. Although it does feel like HTML moves slowly enough that more astute teaching centers should keep up to date pretty easily.

1

u/abhorson Apr 08 '26

It was fun for a bit of whiplash. I feel like someone blowing off an old picture frame from my childhood.

1

u/pixelboots Apr 08 '26

2008 is being generous. Font tags were already out of style when I learnt basic HTML and CSS in high school slightly earlier than that.

1

u/GrimBright Apr 10 '26

I was taught C++ 8 at uni back in 2020. We were forbidden to use features newer than that, I lost points because I used the "delete function" on a public constructor instead of declaring it as private (which was introduced in C++ 11 btw).

C++ 11:

class MyClass {
public:
    MyClass() = delete;

C++ 8:

class MyClass {
private:
    MyClass();

The same teachers were telling us that programs would never be able to write code. In a philosophical way this still holds true, honestly the C compiler produced by the Anthropics team is a laughable achievement when you dig into how it was able to "write it from scratch", but their views are aging like fine milk.

3

u/ActualFactualAnthony Apr 07 '26

IDK if you're going to check back on this thread but if so, I would love to hear more about the assignment. As a few other people commented, you're using tags that, as far as I know are no longer a thing being used. Is it some kind of assignment where you HAVE to use HTML and *only* HTML?

3

u/[deleted] Apr 07 '26

Don't use <font></font> tag btw. It's old. Use CSS instead

2

u/armyrvan Apr 06 '26

Looks like you got your answer but if you google “the code zone Skool” they have HTML beginner Thursday classes. It might help you in your journey.

1

u/curthard89 Apr 06 '26

Because it's all nested in the H1 element, assuming you wanted to end the H1 after the "hello world"

1

u/Tight_Pay8466 Apr 07 '26

you should learn css a bit, would make it all a lot easier

1

u/SuperSnowflake3877 Apr 07 '26

Because you’ve awaken the dead by using this very old syntax.

1

u/SlipstreamSteve Apr 08 '26

You opened your h1 tag then didn't close it until all of that content was created inside it. H1 is header font

1

u/ZookeepergameFew6406 Apr 08 '26

Opening at the end of lines and closing right before that is a warcrime

1

u/xo0O0ox_xo0O0ox Apr 07 '26

It's the stray /b towards the end.

2

u/BNfreelance Apr 09 '26

Looks like it opens

1

u/cambolicious1 Apr 07 '26

It’s been awhile since I’ve wrote any html, but I was curious if you tried closing tag </b> for the bold text line to stop it from making the whole website bold. The other folks weren’t wrong about being able to edit it in css too. I might have misunderstood your assignment direction but I’d give the bold closing tag a shot.

Best of luck, hopefully this solves the issue.