Basic HTML page
<html>
<head>
</head>
<body>
<h3> A header</h3>
<p>This tag starts the paragraph, usually a closing </p> is not needed.
<p>This is the next paragraph, and <b>text can be bold </b> and <strong> bold in the XHTML version <strong> <br><br>
<i>Text can be italic </i> and <em> italic in the XHTML version</em>
<p><a href=”http:/www.cnn.com”>This tag is an anchor tag and will link this sentence to CNN.com </a> <br><br>
<p>Followed by an image source reference to bring in a photo: <br><br>
<img src=”http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site36/2007/0204/20070204_122328_ice_200.jpg”>
<p> Followed by a basic table: <br><br>
<table width=”600″ border=”1″>
<tr><td width=”33%”>
<h1> One </h1> </td>
<td width=”33%”>
<h1> Two </h1> </td>
<td width=”33%”>
<h1> Three </h1> </td>
</tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>
Gives you a page that looks like this:
A header
This tag starts the paragraph, usually a closing </p> is not needed.
This is the next paragraph, and text can be bold and bold in the XHTML version
Text can be italic and italic in the XHTML version.
This tag is an anchor tag and will link this sentence to CNN.com
Followed by an image source reference to bring in a photo:

Followed by a basic table:
One |
Two |
Three |
HTML for the World Wide Web by Elizabeth Castro is an excellent reference. She provides great online references, including an HTML tag reference and CSS properties.
Wired has a good intro to blog content and structure.