The DOCTYPE element technically describes the Document Type Definition (DTD). The HTML there doesn't mean it's an HTML document: it means the root element of th

The DOCTYPE element technically describes the Document Type Definition (DTD). The HTML there doesn't mean it's an HTML document: it means the root element of the document is an HTML tag. The "-//Dow Jones//DTD DJ-HTML//EN" is a Formal Public Identifier, which specifies the actual DTD. The vast majority of sites don't actually guarantee their HTML is valid or even well-formed. In the grand scheme of things, this is most likely cruft left over from the early days of when the site was published and a lot of these things were more up in the air. For a bit more detail: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Document_type_declaration#Syntax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Document_type_declaration#Synt...