There are a few things that all html documents should have in them.
You should start every document with <html>, this tells the browser that this is an html document. At the end of the document you would then close the element with </html>. While most browsers don't need this, it's better to be safe and put it in. Also, some of the people developing future html tags have discussed the possibility of putting other information outside of the <html> </html> element. If this was to happen then you would have to go through all of the documents you created and then add the <html> </html>, which could be a very time consuming task, it's much easier just to be safe and include them in the first place.
The next element you should include is <head> </head>. This element contains header information. This is information which is not displayed in the main body of the text. The most common piece of information is the title of the document.
Inside the <head> </head> element is where you put the title element. This is the title of your document, which will appear in the upper right hand corner of the screen in lynx. In graphical browsers the title is usually displayed in the title bar of the window. You create a title by entering the title you want within the <title> </title> element.
The last element you should include is the <body> </body>. This element is the main body of your text. All of the information that you want to appear on the screen should be included in this element.
So every web document should look something like this:
<html>
<head>
<title>Title of the document goes here</title>
</head>
<body>
Content for the page goes here
</body>
</html>