The doctype and basic page structure

Model answer. <!DOCTYPE html> tells the browser to use standards mode. Without it, browsers fall back to "quirks mode", which imitates old, inconsistent layout behaviour. It is not an HTML tag, and HTML5's version is deliberately short.

A minimal page:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
  <head>
    <meta charset="utf-8">
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
    <title>Admissions 2026 | Example College</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <h1>Admissions 2026</h1>
  </body>
</html>

• lang on <html>: tells screen readers and translators the language.
• <head>: information about the page (not shown in the page body): the character set, title, meta tags, stylesheets, scripts.
• <meta charset="utf-8">: the text encoding; put it first, so characters like ₹ display correctly.
• viewport meta: makes mobile browsers use the device width instead of a zoomed-out desktop layout.
• <title>: the browser tab, bookmarks and search-result headline.
• <body>: everything the user sees.