With HTML, you use your text editor to write down a set of instructions. The instructions are saved as an ASCII text file. The web browser uses these instructions to build and display the page.

There are many HTML tutorials available, as well as countless books on the subject. Here are some tutorials that I've found useful:

HTML Tutorial

Web Teacher

And here are some more that also look useful:

Introduction to HTML

HTML Tutorial: Forms

For advanced / professional web spinners there's a lot of information at:

Kira's Web Toolbox