Doctype HTML

On the HTML document you have often seen that there is a <!DOCTYPE html> declaration before the <html> tag. This <!DOCTYPE html> declaration is not an HTML tag. It is used to instruct the web browser about the HTML page.

Actually, there are many type of HTML e.g. HTML 4.01 Strict, HTML 4.01 Transitional, HTML 4.01 Frameset, XHTML 1.0 Strict, XHTML 1.0 Transitional, XHTML 1.0 Frameset, XHTML 1.1 etc.

The <!DOCTYPE> declaration refers Document Type Declaration (DTD) in HTML 4.01; because HTML 4.01 was based on SGML. But HTML 5 is not SGML based language.

DTD defines the rules for the markup languages so that the browsers recognize the content correctly.

The doctype declaration differs between HTML versions. The HTML 5 doctype declaration is given below.

<!DOCTYPE html>

Let's see an example of HTML document with doctype declaration.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>This is the title</title>
</head>
<body>
This is the content of the document.
</body>
</html>

Test it Now

Note: It is always a good practice to add a declaration to your HTML documents to enable web browser to recognize that what type of document to expect.

Supporting Browsers

Element	Chrome	IE	Firefox	Opera	Safari
<!DOCTYPE>	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

Note: DOCTYPE declaration is not case sensitive.

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Doctype HTML

DTD defines the rules for the markup languages so that the browsers recognize the content correctly.

Note: It is always a good practice to add a declaration to your HTML documents to enable web browser to recognize that what type of document to expect.

Supporting Browsers

Note: DOCTYPE declaration is not case sensitive.