Headings and paragraphs

Headings give your document an outline. HTML provides six levels, from h1 to h6.

Here is a realistic structure for a cycling guide page:

<h1>Copenhagen cycling guide</h1>

<h2>Choose a bicycle</h2>
<p>A city bike is enough for most routes.</p>

<h2>Plan your route</h2>
<h3>Routes for beginners</h3>
<p>Start with the separated paths around the lakes.</p>

The number on a heading describes its level in the outline, not how big you want the text to look. Do not pick h4 because it appears smaller on screen. CSS controls appearance. HTML describes structure.

Use one h1 for the page’s main title. Major sections get h2. A subsection inside an h2 section gets h3, and so on.

Avoid jumping from h2 to h4. A sighted reader might not notice, but someone navigating by headings with a screen reader depends on that hierarchy. Skipping levels makes the outline confusing.

The p element marks a paragraph: a block of related sentences:

<p>The route follows the harbor for five kilometers.</p>

Do not use repeated <br> tags to fake paragraphs. That breaks the document structure and makes spacing harder to control later. One p per real paragraph. Let CSS handle the gaps between them when you add styles.

When you add content to your personal page in the practice lessons, read only the headings out loud. If they tell a clear story in order, your structure is on track.

A common mistake is using headings for styling, such as picking h3 because it looks smaller than h2. Fix that in CSS later. In HTML, the level should reflect the outline, not the font size you want.

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