No it is not like microsoft word, although there are similarities because at the end of the day MS word also has a markup language, it is just a bit more hidden than html.
A markup language is there to describe the layout of a page. HTML is just a large collection of tags that can be used to format a webpage. for example:
Here you have two tags that format the text between them as bold.
if you want to see some html just view the source of a website. probably best to start with a simple website, but it is not too complicated. do your coding in a text editor, such as notepad, and save it with a .htm or .html extension. then it'll open with your web browser