DOCTYPE Declaration

The DOCTYPE Declaration

The DOCTYPE declaration in HTML 5

The DOCTYPE declaration indicates that the content is a HTML document. The name parameter of the DOCTYPE declaration must be html, matching the name of the top element an HTML document.

Converting to HTML 5

We are working on converting to HTML 5. Please visit HTML DOCTYPE Declaration on the HTML 5 standard version of this site.

HTML Best Practices - Why specify a doctype?

From the W3C Tips for Webmasters:

Why specify a DOCTYPE? Because it defines which version of (X)HTML your document is actually using, and this is a critical piece of information needed by browsers or other tools processing the document.

Since the document type is needed by web browsers, viewers or other tools in order to properly interpret a document as a particular version of HTML, the information provided by the DOCTYPE is especially important in situations where there are no HTTP headers available or when the headers do not indicate an XHTML/XML media type such as application/xhtml+xml. Therefore, the DOCTYPE declaration is an important element when creating polyglot HTML documents.

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