Q2005 What is a DOCTYPE?

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A DOCTYPE statement (or DTD), located on the first line of an HTML document, designates the standard of HTML which you have chosen to use. HTML Validators require DTD statements. Without a DTD, they will usually fall back to a default DTD (many times HT ML 2.0), most times causing many errors.

Three common DTDs are:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0//EN"> for HTML 4.0
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN"> for HTML 3.2
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML//EN"> for HTML 2.0

There are many more DTD statements available for use, in the Helpful URLs section you will find a link for a listing of them.