HTML and XHTML Doctypes

Toggle <html> element view

HTML 5

For HTML 5, the doctype is required and is case-insensitive.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title></title>
</head>
<body>

</body>
</html>

XHTML 5

For XHTML 5, the doctype is optional but is case-sensitive. By omitting the doctype, some browsers will parse the page in quirks mode.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title></title>
</head>
<body>

</body>
</html>

XHTML 1.0

XHTML 1.0 Strict

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
<head>
<title></title>
</head>
<body>

</body>
</html>

XHTML 1.0 Transitional

<!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></title>
</head>
<body>

</body>
</html>

XHTML 1.0 Frameset

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Frameset//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-frameset.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
<head>
<title></title>
</head>
<body>

</body>
</html>

XHTML 1.1

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en">
<head>
<title></title>
</head>
<body>

</body>
</html>

HTML 4.01

HTML 4.01 Strict

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<title></title>
</head>
<body>

</body>
</html>

HTML 4.01 Transitional

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<title></title>
</head>
<body>

</body>
</html>

HTML 4.01 Frameset

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Frameset//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/frameset.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<title></title>
</head>
<body>

</body>
</html>


Character Encoding (assuming UTF-8)

XML and XHTML (application/xhtml+xml)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>

XHTML (text/html) and HTML

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8">

Via HTTP header (best practice)

Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8