Looking at the code for the page you have there, it would seem what you've written is correct (as far as it goes) but your WYSIWYG editor (Cocoa HTML Writer?) has decided to write the structure of your page for you and present your code as if it were all text (ie; like an example)
your page's code is actually this ~
code:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css">
<title></title>
<meta name="Generator" content="Cocoa HTML Writer">
<meta name="CocoaVersion" content="824.41">
<style type="text/css">
p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<p class="p1"><html></p>
<p class="p1"><head></p>
<p class="p1"><title><b>My <i>first</i> proper web page</b></title></p>
<p class="p1"></head></p>
<p class="p1"><body></p>
<p class="p1">This is my first fully coded web page. (Well, it's my second, but I'll follow the rules!)</p>
<p class="p1"></body></p>
<p class="p1"></html></p>
</body>
</html>
see the bits like
code:
<html>
that's what it did where you wrote <html>
[edit] I'd guess you're using WYSIWYG mode in your editor (so you got what you saw) but you need to be using a different mode, html or code or whatever
EDITED: 16 Sep 2007 08:06 by JONCOOPER