I’m in chapter 4 of your book "build your website the right way, first edition. I’m stuck on the imaginary web site where you put a “simple black border” around a paragraph. Is there a markup in the HTML markup as well as in the CSS markup? if so, what are they. I spent approximately 6 to 7 hours trying to but a border around paragraph. I experimented with every markup I know. I went to the web sites for help and over and over again in the book. What is your suggestions for the correct markups for putting a border around a paragraph.
there are several ways to accomplish this ( assuming , of course your HTML is correct)
First off… any paragraph of content should be marked up as a <p>…</p>
once you have done that then you can style with CSS
p { border: 10px solid red ;}
note: you will need to give valid SIZE ( px, em, pt … but not %)
note: you will need to give valid STYLE ( SOLID, DASHED, GROVE, RIDGE, DOTTED, DOUBLE , INSET , OUTSET)
note: you will need to give valid COLOR: #HEX, color code, or rgba()
you can add borders to individual sides too!
p { border-bottom: 10px solid red ;}
if you want to only have a SPECIFIC paragraph bordered then you mus use classes or ids in your mark up and CSS
.p-bord{border: 10px solid red ; }
<p class=“pbord”>…</p>
REMEMBER ALSO your CSS mus be brought in via a LINK or reside in the STYLE tag INSIDE THE HEAD tag of your document.
( Well you can do inline CSS withing the tag itself, but that is really cumbersome and defeats the purpose of CSS anyway)
hope that helps
Of course, it will work better if you remember to check that you’ve used the same class in your HTML and CSS. 
Either p-bord or pbord would be fine, but they do need to match. 
Also, if you want to have a specific dimension of the box around the paragraph, you must add the property display:block; width and height, but dimensions are not compulsory. You can also use padding and margins.