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Asked: 2026-05-22T17:06:11+00:00

Possible Duplicate: HTML: What is the functionality of !DOCTYPE I recently asked a question

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Possible Duplicate:
HTML: What is the functionality of !DOCTYPE

I recently asked a question here and the solution was a simple:

You need to add a doctype to the page. This should fix the issue for you.

Now, my pages work fine in every browser without the doctype (except IE). Does IE need a doctype (is this an IE only thing) and do other browsers just assume it OR or is it doing something I’m not seeing.

What are its functions and how does it work?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    All browsers need the doctype. Without the DOCTYPE you are forcing the browsers to render in Quirks Mode.

    However, DOCTYPE was only partially used by the browsers in determining dialect and parsing, even though that was the purpose. This is why HTML5 has reduced the DOCTYPE to simply:

    <!DOCTYPE html>

    2.2. The DOCTYPE

    The HTML syntax of HTML5 requires a DOCTYPE to be specified to ensure that the browser renders the page in standards mode. The DOCTYPE has no other purpose and is therefore optional for XML. Documents with an XML media type are always handled in standards mode. [DOCTYPE]

    The DOCTYPE declaration is <!DOCTYPE html> and is case-insensitive in the HTML syntax. DOCTYPEs from earlier versions of HTML were longer because the HTML language was SGML-based and therefore required a reference to a DTD. With HTML5 this is no longer the case and the DOCTYPE is only needed to enable standards mode for documents written using the HTML syntax. Browsers already do this for <!DOCTYPE html>.

    Source: HTML5 differences from HTML4: DOCTYPE

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