@Blick
Not sure where those "?" characters in you first 'code' display come from. They don't display in my 'code' samples. "<CENTER>" is the old, non-HTML5/CSS way of centering stuff. It is actually deprecated. It only still works because many browsers are backwards compatible... for now.
What I provided is a way of 'embedding' a tiny bit of css directly into a line of html. It's not the best way, but it helps one learn the vastly larger powers of css over the limited styling capabilities of html. CSS is well worth some study. It's really no more difficult than html, anyway.