Markup Validation Service
Check the markup (HTML, XHTML, …) of Web documents
Markup Validation Service
Check the markup (HTML, XHTML, …) of Web documents
The following notes and warnings highlight missing or conflicting information which caused the validator to perform some guesswork prior to validation, or other things affecting the output below. If the guess or fallback is incorrect, it could make validation results entirely incoherent. It is highly recommended to check these potential issues, and, if necessary, fix them and re-validate the document.
DOCTYPE Override in effect!
The DOCTYPE Declaration for "HTML 4.01 Strict" has been inserted at the start of the document, but even if no errors are shown below the document will not be Valid until you add the new DOCTYPE Declaration.
No Character encoding declared at document level
No character encoding information was found within the document, either in an HTML meta element or an XML declaration. It is often recommended to declare the character encoding in the document itself, especially if there is a chance that the document will be read from or saved to disk, CD, etc.
See this tutorial on character encoding for techniques and explanations.
Line 3,
Column 41:
NET-enabling start-tag requires SHORTTAG YES
<meta name="robots" content="noarchive" />
For the current document, the validator interprets strings like
<FOO /> according to legacy rules that
break the expectations of most authors and thus cause confusing warnings
and error messages from the validator. This interpretation is triggered
by HTML 4 documents or other SGML-based HTML documents. To avoid the
messages, simply remove the "/" character in such contexts. NB: If you
expect <FOO /> to be interpreted as an
XML-compatible "self-closing" tag, then you need to use XHTML or HTML5.
This warning and related errors may also be caused by an unquoted
attribute value containing one or more "/". Example:
<a href=http://w3c.org>W3C</a>.
In such cases, the solution is to put quotation marks around the value.
Line 3,
Column 42:
character data is not allowed here
<meta name="robots" content="noarchive" />You have used character data somewhere it is not permitted to appear. Mistakes that can cause this error include:
Line 4,
Column 44:
NET-enabling start-tag requires SHORTTAG YES
<meta name="googlebot" content="nosnippet" />
For the current document, the validator interprets strings like
<FOO /> according to legacy rules that
break the expectations of most authors and thus cause confusing warnings
and error messages from the validator. This interpretation is triggered
by HTML 4 documents or other SGML-based HTML documents. To avoid the
messages, simply remove the "/" character in such contexts. NB: If you
expect <FOO /> to be interpreted as an
XML-compatible "self-closing" tag, then you need to use XHTML or HTML5.
This warning and related errors may also be caused by an unquoted
attribute value containing one or more "/". Example:
<a href=http://w3c.org>W3C</a>.
In such cases, the solution is to put quotation marks around the value.
Line 5,
Column 7:
end tag for "HEAD" which is not finished
</head>Most likely, you nested tags and closed them in the wrong order. For example <p><em>...</p> is not acceptable, as <em> must be closed before <p>. Acceptable nesting is: <p><em>...</em></p>
Another possibility is that you used an element which requires a child element that you did not include. Hence the parent element is "not finished", not complete. For instance, in HTML the <head> element must contain a <title> child element, lists require appropriate list items (<ul> and <ol> require <li>; <dl> requires <dt> and <dd>), and so on.
Line 7,
Column 12:
there is no attribute "ALIGN"
<div align=center>You have used the attribute named above in your document, but the document type you are using does not support that attribute for this element. This error is often caused by incorrect use of the "Strict" document type with a document that uses frames (e.g. you must use the "Transitional" document type to get the "target" attribute), or by using vendor proprietary extensions such as "marginheight" (this is usually fixed by using CSS to achieve the desired effect instead).
This error may also result if the element itself is not supported in the document type you are using, as an undefined element will have no supported attributes; in this case, see the element-undefined error message for further information.
How to fix: check the spelling and case of the element and attribute, (Remember XHTML is all lower-case) and/or check that they are both allowed in the chosen document type, and/or use CSS instead of this attribute. If you received this error when using the <embed> element to incorporate flash media in a Web page, see the FAQ item on valid flash.
