Course Introduction
Calling all students!
@flyingCouch @xinmure @lst-my-shp-sil @greekmyth @merinnie @Theora @deathinreverie @Forever_D_A @ValKayRee @dumplingbabe @hazelnuttys @panaceia @Beth-Pebble @floreswrites @JJJ000YYY
Welcome, one and all, to the very first of many assignments created by yours truly to help you learn how to code! I promise I won’t be doing this introduction thing for future assignments but since it’s the first one, I wanted to explain the structure of the course while I still have your attention. I recommend you read all of this to make sure you maximize your learning and minimize any potential issues.
For most of the assignments in this course, you will be tagged as soon as it is up and I will give you a week to complete it. I will be very clear on the deadline and I will mark you down if you submit late. (If you join late into the course, however, the earlier assignments won’t count against you. I will expect you to be properly caught up for future assignments.)
I also ask and require that when you submit your assignments in this thread that you do it as a direct reply to the post where the assignment details are. It makes it easy for me to click on the amount of replies below the assignment’s details to find all of the submissions instead of digging through the entire thread. Here’s an image of what I mean:
In addition to posting your code as you designed it to look, I will also ask for you to share your raw code with me via Pastebin, which is a handy site to share code easily. You do not need an account to upload code to Pastebin, and if you have trouble with using it, please let me know as soon as you can so I can troubleshoot with you.
If you have any other questions and concerns about the course or if you wish to drop out, feel free to reach out to me! Now, without further ado, continue to the next section to begin your assignment! 
Unit 1: HTML vs. BBCode vs. Markdown
To start things off, we’re going to go over the differences between HTML, BBCode, and Markdown, so that we know which ones to use and when.
HTML is, arguably, the most powerful of the three and it’s what is used to build web pages. Tags in HTML typically begin with <tag name> and end with </tag name>.
As an example, here is how to make a word bold in HTML: <b>bolded</b>. B is short for bold and typing that code out produces bolded. If you change the “b” to “i”, it would italicize the word instead, and if you use “s”, it would strikethrough the word. More tags exist and I encourage you to practice with as many as you can.
BBCode, to a lesser extent, can do some of the same things that HTML can but BBCode is typically used to stylize forum posts and not to create webpages. Unlike HTML, BBCode uses [tag name] at the start and [/tag name] at the end of the section you wish to effect. So, if you want to make a word bold with BBCode, you would use [b]bolded[/b]. The same is true for italicizing and strikethrough. Other tags exist as well, which you can read more about here.
Markdown is, in my opinion, the simplest to use of the three different languages I’ve mentioned so far. It’s also what Discourse uses when you use some of the options from the toolbar:
It’s so simple that you can learn basically everything you need to know about it in this short interactive tutorial. I encourage you all to give it a try if you get the chance. If not, that’s okay. We won’t be using Markdown for future assignments.
As for what I want you to do, I want you to take the following three sentences and modify them (one with HTML only, one with BBCode only, and one with Markdown only):
1. One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got into my pajamas I’ll never know.
2. If you’re going to tell people the truth, be funny or they’ll kill you.
3. The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.
Direct reply to this message with your submission by August 17th 6pm PDT. Grades will be given shortly. If, at any point during this assignment you wish to ask a question, feel free to tag me and ask!