For the record, the smallest validating document is actually: <!doctype html><title></title> Although I can't right now see the part of the spec that allows

For the record, the smallest validating document is actually: <!doctype html><title></title> Although I can't right now see the part of the spec that allows an empty title element, which is either a bug in my reading, a validator bug or a spec bug. Of course, declaring a charset is generally a good thing to do (arguably more useful than a <title> if you expect the document will be in an <iframe> for example) but even if that were required you could get rid of the entirely optional trailing " /" and save two characters. And strip the quotes around the attribute value for two more characters.