Art, HTML=Hypertext Markup Language. It tells your Browser (netscape, I. Explorer, etc.) what the page should look like and do. All web pages are created usining HTML commands. You can use html commands to create special effects like italics or to create live links in your postings to this forum. That is what the above list is, it is a list of html tags that you can use in your postings. Each tag comes in two parts, a prefix and a suffix.
example:

strong

=the prefix
= the suffix< using these tags before and after the word strong will make it look like this:
strong
If you wish to create a live link use this tag:
click here!

If you wish to see what the html looks like click on "view" at the top of your browser, then "document source" ,assuming that you are using Netscape. (If you are using Internet explorer, get Netscape and get rid of that crummy Microsoft software.)
I hope this helps you out.
Dan