Writing plain HTML purely by hand is a pain. A massive pain. Don't do it. If you're writing HTML by hand, you're writing well over half of what you should be writing. There are tools out there that help, my number one favourite being ZEN coding.
ZEN coding is a set of tools, namely an abbreviation engine, for writing and manipulating HTML. The abbreviation engine allows you to write CSS selectors in place that ZEN will expand for you, which alone is extremely powerful. For example, the if we want 2 unordered lists of 4 links, we can write:
ul*2>li*4>a
<ul>
<li><a href=""></a></li>
<li><a href=""></a></li>
<li><a href=""></a></li>
<li><a href=""></a></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><a href=""></a></li>
<li><a href=""></a></li>
<li><a href=""></a></li>
<li><a href=""></a></li>
</ul>
This is just the start though, it really comes into its own when you realise the power of Wrap abbreviation.
ZEN coding dramatically increases the rate I can write HTML and it did this within a couple of days. I remember when me and a colleague would receive a Word doc which had to be completely marked up. My colleague would take it up using a hacked together solution - he wasn't a very good programmer but had more HTML/CSS experience than me. This would take him around 2 hours to complete (70+ page doc). When he left, it was down to me. I completed it in the same amount of time using just ZEN coding (I'm not crazy though, I did write a better tool which cut that job down to 5 mins).
I advocate it so much I demand any new starter to learn it as a priority - the difference in productivity is phenomenal.
With ZEN coding, I don't need these abstractions. I can just write HTML and I don't need to recompile every time I update it.
I urge you all to try it. It will change your perception of writing HTML. Funnily enough, I now find it therapeutic.