When your first web page is up on the World Wide Web, why not apply for our Good Start Award?

So far, all the text on our pages has been "left aligned", as this is the way in which text is aligned if we don't say otherwise. Often however we'll want our text to be centered on the page or even right-aligned.

Centre alignment is easy to achieve using the <CENTER>...</CENTER> tags (note the American spelling again!). In the example below the heading is centered and the rest of the text is left-aligned:

<H3><CENTER>Main Heading</CENTER></H3>
This text will be left-aligned whereas the heading is centered.        

Unfortunately, if we want to right-align our text there is no equivalent of the <CENTER> tag. Instead we must use the alternative form of the paragraph tag as in the following example:

This text is left-aligned
<P ALIGN=RIGHT>This text is right-aligned</P>        

Although we've been talking about aligning text, the tags shown above can be applied equally well to other HTML elements such as images and tables. Try Exercise 5.1 now, and when you think you understand the use of the tags we've covered so far, go on to the next section on Using Images.