If you hang out in beginner coding forums long enough, you'll see a lot of the same HTML issues pop up over and over. It's not because people are careless. It's because HTML is deceptively simple. It doesn't throw red errors at you. It doesn't crash. It doesn't scream. It just quietly renders whatever it thinks you meant. So naturally, beginners keep repeating mistakes until they catch on.
The nice thing is that almost all beginner HTML mistakes are easy to fix once you understand why they happen. And there's something comforting about realizing even experienced developers made these exact mistakes when they started.
Forgetting to Close Tags
One of the most common mistakes is forgetting to close tags. For example:
<p>This is a sentence
<p>This is another sentence</p>
The browser might auto-close the first p tag or merge both into one paragraph. It tries to be helpful. But the layout might feel slightly off, or spacing might look inconsistent. When you inspect the DOM, you'll see the structure didn't match what you intended. Adding the missing </p> restores order.
Mis-Nesting Tags
Closely related to this is mis-nesting tags. HTML expects things to be wrapped inside each other like proper containers. For example, you can't put a heading tag inside another paragraph and expect it to behave. The browser tries to correct it, but the fix isn't always what the user had in mind. Debugging usually becomes easier once you understand which tags are "block-level" and which are "inline," but most beginners don't know those terms yet. For now, just remember not everything likes being stuffed into everything else.
File Path Issues
Another mistake beginners make involves file paths, especially for images. They might write:
<img src="photo.jpg">
and wonder why nothing shows up. They check the HTML ten times and swear everything is correct. The issue is usually the path. The image might not be in the same folder as the HTML file. Or maybe the file name has upper-case letters but the HTML uses lower-case. On some systems that difference matters. Or the file extension is .png but they wrote .jpg. Once they open the browser console, there's a little 404 error hinting that the browser tried but couldn't find the file.
Missing Quotes Around Attributes
Then there are attribute problems. Beginners sometimes forget quotes around attribute values:
<a href=https://example.com>Visit</a>
Browsers might attempt to guess, but guesswork rarely ends well. The safe habit is to always wrap attributes in quotes:
<a href="https://example.com">Visit</a>
It prevents a whole class of tiny headaches later.
Using HTML for Spacing
Another interesting beginner mistake is using HTML to control spacing. Someone wants to push text down a bit and decides to hit the spacebar twenty times. Or they insert a dozen <br> tags to create vertical gaps. Browsers ignore most repeated spaces and collapse them. And using <br> for layout becomes messy fast. CSS should handle spacing. HTML should describe content. Once you internalize that separation, everything feels cleaner.
Heading Misuse
Heading misuse is a surprisingly common problem too. Beginners use h1, h2, h3 like font sizes. They treat h1 as "big text," h2 as "medium text," and h3 as "smaller text." But headings are semantic, not stylistic. Search engines and assistive technologies rely on heading levels to understand document structure. There should typically be one h1 per page indicating the main topic. h2 introduces sections, h3 introduces subsections, and so on. If you just want small text, CSS has you covered.
Bold and Italic Misuse
Bold and italic misuse show up in beginner markup as well. People reach for <b> and <i> because they feel familiar. But the recommended tags are <strong> and <em>. They convey meaning, not just styling. Screen readers stress emphasized text and announce strong text as important. It's subtle, but accessibility matters more than beginners think.
Overusing Div Tags
Then there's the classic div-everywhere pattern. New developers wrap everything in div tags, even content that has better semantic matches. Stuff that could be <nav>, <section>, <article>, <header>, or <footer> ends up inside a forest of divs. This isn't technically wrong, the browser handles it fine, but the structure becomes harder to read and search engines get fewer hints about what things mean. Replacing some divs with semantic counterparts makes markup more self-explanatory.
Using Tables for Layout
Tables deserve their own mention here. Some beginners use them to build layouts, which was common in the 90s when CSS was not widely adopted. Today tables should only display data. Using tables for layout leads to inflexible designs that break on small screens. Debugging them becomes frustrating fast. Switching to CSS makes life easier.
Missing Form Attributes
Forms introduce subtle mistakes too. You might see:
<input placeholder="Email">
and assume that's enough. But if the form needs to submit data, the name attribute is required. Without name, the input doesn't contribute to the submission. The form sends nothing for that field. So beginners wonder why their backend isn't receiving values. It's a tiny detail with big consequences.
Forgetting Alt Attributes
Another mistake is forgetting the alt attribute on images. It's not a visual issue, so beginners skip it. But accessibility tools rely on alt text to describe images to users who can't see them. Search engines also read alt text to understand image content. Adding an alt attribute is a tiny investment with long-term benefits.
Missing DOCTYPE Declaration
Some beginners forget the <!DOCTYPE html> declaration entirely. Browsers enter quirks mode if it's missing, which changes how rendering works. Debugging quirks mode isn't fun. Adding the line helps browsers interpret everything with modern standards.
Duplicate IDs
Then there's duplicate IDs. Beginners create multiple elements with the same id because it "works." HTML expects id to be unique. CSS selectors and JavaScript break or behave inconsistently when multiple elements share one id. Classes exist exactly to style multiple elements. Once beginners switch to using class for repetition and id for uniqueness, their code behaves predictably.
Script Tag Placement
The script tag placement trip appears next. Some beginners put script tags in the head, causing JavaScript to run before HTML loads. This creates errors like "Cannot read property of null" because the script tried to reference elements that didn't exist yet. Moving the script tag to the end of the body (or adding defer) fixes this instantly.
Whitespace Obsession
Whitespace obsession also shows up. Beginners expect HTML to obey line breaks the same way word processors do. HTML collapses whitespace by default. So people wonder why hitting enter 10 times doesn't create vertical padding. CSS handles spacing, not HTML. Once that clicks, beginners stop fighting HTML's whitespace logic.
Trusting Appearance Over Structure
One of the most sneaky mistakes: trusting how things "look" rather than how they're structured. A page may look fine visually while the markup underneath is a mess. Later when CSS or JavaScript enters the picture, the layout falls apart because the HTML wasn't solid. Thinking of HTML as structure instead of decoration fixes this mindset.