Bart Lateur wrote:
> In the DTD of HTML 4.01, <http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/sgml/dtd.html>,
> it states that the only legal elements in the BODY element are block
> tags (and a few more: SCRIPT, INS and DEL):
>
> <!ELEMENT BODY O O (%block;|SCRIPT)+ +(INS|DEL) -- document body -->
>
> These block elements are the following:
>
> <!ENTITY % block
> "P | %heading; | %list; | %preformatted; | DL | DIV | NOSCRIPT |
> BLOCKQUOTE | FORM | HR | TABLE | FIELDSET | ADDRESS">
>
> Where %heading; is the tags H1 to H6, %list; is UL and OL, and
> %preformatted; is PRE.
>
> That is all.
>
> So, if I get this correctly, it is not legal to put text, or inline
> elements (text formatting, SPAN) directly into a BODY tag. None of these
> tags are implied. Yet, people do it all the time.

People also exceed the speed limit and fail to declare gambling winnings
to the tax authorities.

> What gives? Am I misunderstanding the spec, or a people doing it wrong?

In earlier HTML it was OK, and it's still OK in HTML 4.01 Transitional,
but not in Strict.