How to ignore or hide a portion of a webpage

[cartais]

i am just beginning to learn html, and i am writing a page with notes in the page's text, like this:

<a /*tag*/ href="/* the address of the desired page*/ "> text for the link here, or what is actually clicked on/displayed </a>

i was told anything inside of /* */ is ignored by the computer entirely as if it were not there, but when i attempted this:

<a /*tag*/ href="http://www.google.com
/* the address of the desired page*/ "> text for the link here, or what is actually clicked on/displayed </a>

it attempted to open the page and gave me the following message:

The requested URL /*%20the%20address%20of%20the%20desired%20page*/ was not found on this server.

how would i put "notes" into my code that i can reference but are not "read" by the computer? my desire is to have a completed and working link with a description of each element in the code beside what part it is describing but the descriptions are ignored by the computer when using the link, if that makes any sense

[drhowarddrfine]

Comments in HTML are indicated by

<!-- comment -->

and cannot be inside other elements. What you show is typical of comments in C or Javascript programming languages only. Put your comments next to but not inside the elements as most people do.

<a href="http://google.com/">Hello</a> <!-- Comment -->

[cyberience]

Yes as mentioned above <!--comment--> is the best way to hide code. but not the only one.
I also use this method for data tags in the HTML, <!--tagname--> then do a replace of the <!--tagname--> with some data, code or other inline code, then I can keep the hTML as a template and in a complete structure.
As I mentioned other methods to hide code, and be able to control it is to place the code inside <DIV> tags.
<div style:visibility="hidden"> ..... </div>
Then you can simply say visible. other tags can use this style directive, and you can have more than one, such as inline form to swap if a different form is required at the browser.
Hope this helps.