P REFORMATTED TEXT
Most of the ti me, text in an HTML file is formatted based on the HTML tags used to mark up that text. As I mentioned in lesson 3, “introducing HTML and XHTML,” any extra white space (space, tabs, returns) that you pout in your text is stripped out by the browser.
The one exception to this rule in the preformatted text tag <pre>. Any white space that you out into text surrounded by the <pre> and </pre> tags is retained in the final output. With these tags, the spacing in the text in the HTML source is preserved when it’s displayed on the page.
The catch is that preformatted text usually is displayed (in graphical displays, at least) in a monospaced font such as courier. Preformatted text is excellent for displaying code examples in which you want the text formatted with spaces, you can use it for simple tables. However, the fact that the tables are presented in a monospaced font might make them less than ideal. (you’ll learn how to create real tables in lesson 8, “building tables”.) the following is an example of a table created with <pre>:
INPUT