> I'd never heard valid UTF-8 would allow you to > dispense with the declaration entirely. You can specify different > character sets if you choose (ISO-BLAH-BLAH, UTF-16). Cite from XHTML 1.1 Recommendation: An XML declaration... is not required... [It] is required when the character encoding of the document is other than the default UTF-8 or UTF-16. On the other hand (from the same place): XHTML document authors are... encouraged to use XML declarations. Copied from: http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/REC-xhtml11-20010531/conformance.html#strict (scroll to the page bottom for the full cite) Kind regards. Dmytro Borovsky. Web Studio http://www.web-artel.net/