The web only works because there is a measure of standardisation between the languages that the different web browsers can recognise and display. In an ideal world, all browsers would recognise the same language and display each page in exactly the same way; but as you have probably realised by now, this isn't the case. The different browsers tend to use the same core components, but each adds its own extensions on top, which can cause problems when designing pages to be read by a wide range browsers.

Standards also encourage you to create consistent and readable HTML, which is a step along the way to good hypertext design. The World Wide Web Consortium produces guidelines and standards which define a core HTML language, and there are various tools which allow you to verify your pages against these standards; for more information see earlier (the section called “How do I make a web page?”) .