htmlvalidationw3c-validation

What's a minimally valid HTML5 document?

I've just been reading the HTML5 author spec. It states that the <html>, <head> and <body> tags are optional. Does that mean that you can leave them out completely and still have a valid HTML5 document?

If I'm interpreting this correctly, it means this should be completely valid:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<p>Hello!</p>

Is this correct?

You can check out the spec here:

http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec-author-view/syntax.html#syntax

"8.1.2.4 Optional tags" is the bit out about it being OK to omit <html>, <head> and <body>

Solution

  • The title element is indeed required, but as Jukka Korpela notes, it also must be non-empty. Furthermore, the content model of the title element is:

    Text that is not inter-element whitespace.

    Therefore, having just a space character in the title element is not considered valid HTML. You can check this in W3C validator.

    So, an example of a minimal and valid HTML5 document is the following:

    <!doctype html><title>a</title>