How to Work with Comments in HTML

It's helpful when writing HTML to be able to put text into a document that is just for use by yourself or future editors of the document. Such text is known as a comment. In this how-to, you'll learn how to work with HTML comments.

Comments are generally used for one of three purposes.

To write helpful notes about the code, for example, why something is written in a specific way.
To comment out some code that is not currently needed, but may be used sometime in the future.
To debug a page.

HTML comments are enclosed in . For example:

<!-- This is an HTML comment -->

Follow these steps to practice using HTML comments:

Start with a simple HTML document, like the following:


<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title></title>
</head>
<body>

</body>
</html>

Add a comment to the <body> element.


<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title></title>
</head>
<body>
	<!--this is the body of the document-->
</body>
</html>

Add two <p> elements to the document, and then comment one of them out.


<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title></title>
</head>
<body>
    <!--this is the body of the document-->
    <p>this paragraph is visible</p>
    <!--<p>this paragraph is commented out-->
</body>
</html>

Save the file and open it in a browser. It should look like the following.