Minimal Document Structure
This markup sample shows the minimal structure of an HTML 4.01 document. This example uses the Strict HTML DTD:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd"> <html> <head><title>Document Title</title></head> <body>Content of document . . .</body> </html>
This markup sample shows the minimal structure of an XHTML 1.0 document as specified in the XHTML 1.0 Recommendation. This document is written using the XHTML Transitional DTD.
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> <head><title>Document Title</title></head> <body>Content of document . . .</body> </html>
In both examples, the first line is the Document Type
Declaration (or DOCTYPE declaration)
that declares the DTD version used for the document. It is used to
check the document for validity. Some browsers also use the inclusion
of a complete DOCTYPE declaration to switch into a standards-compliant
rendering mode. Note that the XHTML document uses a different DOCTYPE
declaration than the HTML document and includes XML namespace and
language identification in the html
root element.
XHTML documents may optionally include an XML declaration before the DOCTYPE declaration, as shown in this example:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> ...Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Read now
Unlock full access