Teach Yourself HTML
Since HTML is the language of the Internet, there are plenty of tutorials on the Web to help you learn it.
The tutorial available through EchoEcho is impressively detailed, with forms, images, hex colors, and more. Each section ends with a quiz, which is important for helping the knowledge sink in.
HTML Code Tutorial has the stated goal to "provide the most helpful and complete guide to creating web pages anywhere." It certainly has plenty of tutorials, from "applets" to "weird tags." It also has a forum where you can communicate with other users learning HTML, which is helpful. Even if you are already an HTML pro, you may want to glance from time to time at the Quick List on the site, which has a long list of common HTML tags and links to information on each one. Quick quiz: what does USEMAP do?
Stop in at the 24-Hour HTML Cafe to read tips and lessons on web design. Note the cute Web design allowing you to pick your options from a tray of food, where "Reader Feedback" is an empty plate and "Instant HTML" is a refreshing beverage. There is also an HTML clock with 24 hours squeezed in, which operates as a progression. Hour 2 is "Create a Page" and Hour 24 is "Future HTML."
You can also pick up a book, or find an e-book, that will teach you how to use HTML. The book promoted by the 24-Hour HTML Cafe is Sam's Teach Yourself HTML and CSS in 24 Hours, which is available from Amazon in its seventh edition, in both print and Kindle versions. There is also Teach Yourself HTML in 10 Minutes. It's hard to beat that for brevity.
Learning Web Design: HTML Graphics and Beyond is a guide by Jennifer Niedurst that comes recommended by Jennifer Kyrnin of About.com. It is published by reputable tech publisher O'Reilly and takes beginners all the way through completing a site of their own. However, it is somewhat light on advanced material and doesn't tell readers how to upload to free sites without using FTP.
HTML has a well-deserved reputation for being an easy language for nonprogrammers to pick up, which has been vital to the user-driven success of the World Wide Web. Even though blog hosting sites and social media sites have somewhat taken over the role of the personal Web pages that used to be more common, you will feel much more creative on the Web if you know some of the basics of its main programming language.