HTML Basics
Stanford University Libraries & Academic Information Resources

Code

The CODE element indicates a "source code phrase", that is, a text representing a bit of programming code. Unless you are writing computer documentation (or HTML tutorials!) you will probably never need to use this. You will, of course, find it used frequently throughout this tutorial.

Example

The paragraph above is marked up thus:

<p>The <code>CODE</code> element indicates a "source code
phrase", that is, a text representing a bit of programming
code. Unless you are writing computer documentation (or HTML
tutorials!) you will probably never need to use this. You
will, of course, find it used frequently throughout this
tutorial.</p>

It is interesting to note that HTML contains quite a few highlighting tags suitable for use in computer documentation but not much else. This reflects HTML's origins at CERN, where it was developed largely to facilitate the dissemination of the large body of software documentation that grew up around the particle physics enterprise.