So, for some reason, you want a line across the page. A lot of people want this at one time or another - it is nice for separating sections of text... for some lyrics and the explication of the lyrics.
How do you get a line across the page?
- The wrong way
-
A series of '-' (or '_') marks together will make a somewhat convincing line. There will be a few white spots in it between the characters. The problem occurs when this line gets w i d e. You see, there are no spaces in this line, so browsers won't break it - to a program, this just looks like a really long word. What does this mean?
It means that putting a bunch of '-' will stretch out the width of the page and make it look ugly. This is a bad thing. Why do newspapers have narrow columns? Because it is easier to read lots of short lines than a few long lines - easier on the eyes... And thats without having to reach down and grab the scroll bar and move it so you can read the rest of the line that has stretched out to the right.
- The right way
The creators of HTML saw a need for just a line, and so they made a tag - <hr>. This tag will make a horizontal line (a.k.a rule) across the page.
Like that. The big advantage here, is that this line matches the width of the screen. If the screen gets narrow, the line shrinks; and likewise if the screen gets wider, the line grows. This does not appear to be a word to a browser, so it doesn't force page width.
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