How to add <instructional> code to page?

[abercrombie]

i need to add this code to a page for instructional guidance. easy here with the code command but how do you perform such in HTML? i tried pre and also code tags but nothing within the brackets show up.

<sample_list> : <sample_list> [: example <a_command>

[abercrombie]

i figured it out using &lt; (open bracket) and &gt (close bracket).

[AutisticCuckoo]

Yes, the '<' and '>' characters have special meaning in HTML, indicating the beginning and end of a tag, respectively. In SGML parlance they're known as the STAGO and TAGC delimiters.

If you want to represent them literally you must escape them using character entity references (&lt; and &gt;) or numeric character references (&#38;#60; and &#38;#62;).

This applies in all HTML element types that allow character data as content, except style and script. XHTML doesn't have that exception.