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HTML : Doctypes in HTML5

Doctypes - short for 'document type' - help browsers to understand the version of HTML the document is written in for better interpretability. Doctype declarations are not HTML tags and belong at the very top of a document. This topic explains the structure and declaration of various doctypes in HTML

Adding the Doctype

The <!DOCTYPE> declaration should always be included at the top of the HTML document, before the <html> tag.

See HTML 5 Doctype for details on the HTML 5 Doctype.

<!DOCTYPE html>

HTML 5 Doctype

HTML5 is not based on SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language), and therefore does not require a reference to a DTD (Document Type Definition).

HTML 5 Doctype declaration:
<!DOCTYPE html>

Case Insensitivity

Per the W3.org HTML 5 DOCTYPE Spec:

A DOCTYPE must consist of the following components, in this order:

  1. A string that is an ASCII case-insensitive match for the string "<!DOCTYPE".

therefore the following DOCTYPEs are also valid:

<!doctype html>
<!dOCtyPe html>
<!DocTYpe html>

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