But, behind the scenes, Blogger is actually writing HTML code for you. HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language and it is the code behind everything you see on a web page.

Here is an example of why you need to know a little bit about HTML. This comes from a question on our Members’ Forum:

"When trying to publish today’s blog, I received the following message: HTML cannot be accepted: Closing tag has no matching opening tag:</em> What on earth does this mean, and how can I fix it?"

Here’s my answer:
HTML code always has an opening tag and a closing tag.  An opening tag is some code enclosed in angle brackets <xx>.  A closing tag is the same code enclosed in brackets, but with a / at the beginning to indicate it’s the end </xx>.

em is the code for Emphasis aka Italics.  So, if you see <em>This is in italics</em>  That means the words ‘this is in italics’ … will display in italics, or whatever your browser does to indicate Emphasis. 

So, "Closing tag has no matching opening tag:</em>"  means that the beginning <em> tag was missing.  This happens when you use the italic button while editing a blog post, and then after adding and deleting text, you mistakenly delete part of the code.

You can fix it by going into HTML view and finding the orphaned </em> and deleting it.  Then, you can redo any italics back in the Compose view.

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