Why isn't doctype self-closing

StackOverflow https://stackoverflow.com/questions/19199106

  •  30-06-2022
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Question

Provided an xhtml doctype like <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">, why is this tag itself allowed to be non self-closing / non closing at all?

Aka why isn't it: <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd" />

Was it helpful?

Solution

It's not a tag (element). It's a declaration and that is the syntax for a declaration (doctype declaration specifically).

Other declarations (ELEMENT, ENTITY, ATTLIST, etc.) have a similar syntax. The > closes the declaration.

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