What is !DOCTYPE?

Experience Level: Junior
Tags: HTML

Answer

  • The <!DOCTYPE> is a declaration that defines at what version of HTML the page is written in. In helps the browser to understand how it should read the document.
  • If the <!DOCTYPE> is ommitted, the browser is trying to interpret the document, but it could be displaying it incorrectly. For that reason always add the <!DOCTYPE> to you document.
  • The <!DOCTYPE> declaration must be the first thing in your HTML document. It has to be even before the <html> tag.
  • The <!DOCTYPE> declaration is not a tag.
Example
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>...</head>
<body>
    ...
</body>
</html>

Other !DOCTYPEs

HTML 4.01 Strict
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"
   "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
HTML 4.01 Transitional
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
   "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
HTML 4.01 Frameset
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Frameset//EN"
   "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/frameset.dtd">
XHTML 1.0 Strict
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
XHTML 1.0 Transitional
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
XHTML  1.0 Frameset
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Frameset//EN"
   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-frameset.dtd">
XHTML 1.1 - DTD
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN" 
   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">
XHTML Basic 1.1
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML Basic 1.1//EN"
    "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml-basic/xhtml-basic11.dtd">
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