Categories of html tags are decided based on their use and application areas. There are basically 4 categories of HTML tags. They are as follows :

  1. Block contents / block elements
  2. Text formatting tags
  3. Form / user input tags
  4. Frame / iFrame

Block contents:

As we now know that the <body> tag generates the output in white area of your browser. The first category of tags i.e. block elements are used to allocate spaces in this white area. For eg. Space for displaying the logo, space for login, space for menu, space for footer and so on. There are 4 block content tags:

  • <div> , <table> :- these tags are used to hold the website structure.
  • <p> , <span> :- these tags are used to hold text or images.

Text formatting tags :

  We are all familiar with MS Word document. Whatever effects we want to give to the text (i.e. bold, underline, italics etc.) similar effect can be given to the text in an html page using this category of tags. Tags in this category are : <b> , <i> , <u>, <sup> , <sub> etc..

Form/user input tags :

A dynamic website is a combination  of two technologies : client-side and server-side technology. Whereby in order to transfer the data between the two we make use of this category of tags. Eg. : To login to a website we need to provide username and password which is to be submitted to the server. Tags belonging to this category are <input> , <textarea>  , <button> etc..

Frame/iFrame :

This category of tags can be used to merge (client side merging) multiple pages and create a single page. We have tags  like <frameset> , <frame> and <iframe>