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happenstance

My plan has always been:

* keep making tags lowercase

* keep quoting attribute values

* keep closing tags after I open them (and properly nesting tags)

* keep using the closing slash for standalone tags

* keep calling it text/html (mime type)

* keep using UTF-8 encoded Unicode by default

* keep not using xml namespaces

* keep forgetting to use the DOCTYPE declaration

* and start carefully using some of the neat new tags in html5

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Forgetting to use a DOCTYPE is a bad idea, since it throws most browsers in to "quirks" mode meaning they won't render things according to the published standards. That makes debugging problems a whole lot harder since you first have to work out if the bug relates to quirks mode v.s. standards mode, and quirks mode problems are far less widely documented.

Given my html as described above, what would you recommend to use for the DOCTYPE line?

<!DOCTYPE html>

easy to remember and triggers standards mode

Looks redundant, but easy. Thanks.

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