DOCTYPE in HTML – What Is a Document Type Declaration?
A DOCTYPE declaration informs browsers about a document's type and version.
Example of an HTML Document with a Doctype Declaration
The <!DOCTYPE html>
preamble in the snippet below tells web browsers that the page is an HTML5 document type.
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Your document's title</title>
</head>
<body>
<!-- Space for the documents's content such as <p>, <div>, and <img> elements -->
</body>
</html>
Note the following:
- A
<!DOCTYPE>
declaration is not an HTML tag. It is a preamble for declaring information about a document to web browsers. - It is essential to declare your document type before defining other HTML elements.
- The
<!DOCTYPE>
declaration is case-insensitive. So, browsers interpret<!DOCTYPE>
,<!doctype>
,<!Doctype>
, and<!DocType>
as equivalent document type declarations.
Overview
The article discussed what a <!DOCTYPE>
is. We also used an example to understand how to define it in an HTML document.