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What is the meaning of DOCTYPE in HTML ?

Last Updated : 23 Jul, 2025
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The HTML document type declaration or Doctype is an instruction used by web browsers to fetch what version of HTML the website is written in. It helps browsers in understanding how the document should be interpreted thus eases the rendering process. It is neither an element nor a tag. The doctype should be placed on the top of the document. It must not contain any content and does not need a closing tag.

Syntax:

<!DOCTYPE html>

Example 1: In this example, we will use Doctype.

HTML 
<!-- This resembles doctype for HTML5 file  -->
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
    <title>Page Title</title>
</head>
<body>
    <h2>Welcome To GFG</h2>
    <p>Default code has been loaded into the Editor.</p>
</body>
</html>

Example 2: Below is the declaration of the XHTML 1.1 document

HTML 
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN" 
"https://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">
<html>
<head>
    <title>Page Title</title>
</head>
<body>
    <h2>Welcome To GFG</h2>
    <p>Default code has been loaded into the Editor.</p>
</body>
</html>

Following are some doctype files to be included with the following document types:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN" 
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Frameset//EN" 
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-frameset.dtd">
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" 
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" 
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Frameset//EN" 
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/frameset.dtd">
  • HTML 4.01 Transitional
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" 
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" 
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<!DOCTYPE html>

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manishkrjha
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