HTML <html> Tag

Last Updated : 11 Jul, 2025

HTML is a language full of diverse elements, and one such element is the <html> tag. This tag, standing for ‘HyperText Markup Language’, is used to define the root of an HTML or XHTML document.

It serves as the main container for all other HTML elements, excluding the <!DOCTYPE> declaration
It follows the <!DOCTYPE> declaration and requires both opening and closing tags.

Syntax:

<html> HTML Contents... </html>

HTML Document Structure

Default CSS Settings

The following default values are mostly displayed by the current browsers:

html {
  display: block;
  visibility: visible
}

Attribute Value:

The <html> tag includes the xmlns attribute. This attribute defines the namespace for attributes, ensuring proper interpretation and compatibility of XHTML elements.

Note: The <html> tag supports the Global Attributes in HTML.

HTML Tag Examples

Example 1: This example illustrates the <html> tag element in HTML.

HTML

<!DOCTYPE html>
<!-- html tag starts here -->
<html>
<body>
    <h1>GeeksforGeeks</h1>
    <h2>
        html Tag
    </h2>
</body>
</html>
<!-- html tag ends here -->

Example 2: In this example, we will be using the xmlns attribute inside the <html> tag.

HTML

<!DOCTYPE html
    PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" 
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="https://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml/">

<head>
    <title>html Tag</title>
    <style>
        h1 {
            color: green;
        }

        body {
            text-align: center;
        }
    </style>
</head>

<body>
    <h1>GeeksforGeeks</h1>
    <h2>
        html Tag
    </h2>
</body>

</html>