treyharris · July 17, 2021 21:30 · Jul 17, 2021 · Jul 17, 2021 · Jul 17, 2021
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
 # In search of the shortest HTML5 document
 
 I was curious what wass the minimum-allowed HTML5 document. I _think_ it is (neglecting newlines and indention whitespace,
-which could be deleted to make the document shorter in character length:
+which are deleted to make the document shorter in character length):
 
 ```html
 <!doctype html>

diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
@@ -55,7 +55,7 @@ you can leave out the `=…` when an attribute is empty. So, we can kill the `="
   </title>
 ```
 
-or, removing whitespace,
+or, removing whitespace, we get these 42 characters:
 
 ```html
 <!doctype html><html lang><title>.</title>

diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,64 @@
+# In search of the shortest HTML5 document
+
+I was curious what wass the minimum-allowed HTML5 document. I _think_ it is (neglecting newlines and indention whitespace,
+which could be deleted to make the document shorter in character length:
+
+```html
+<!doctype html>
+<html lang>
+  <title>
+    .
+  </title>
+```
+
+With the `.` replaceable by almost any plaintext character.
+
+If you don't care about warnings, this works:
+
+```html
+<!doctype html><title>.</title>
+```
+
+however, the [HTML5 validator](https://validator.w3.org/) suggests:
+
+> Consider adding a `lang` attribute to the `html` start tag to declare the language of this document.
+
+To remove the warning, you could write something like:
+
+```html
+<!doctype html>
+<html lang="en">
+  <title>
+    .
+  </title>
+```
+
+Since all allowed `lang` subtypes have at least two characters, there's no language shorter than `en`
+(or `de` or `fr` or `ja`, etc.). However, an _empty_ `lang`:
+
+```html
+<!doctype html>
+<html lang="">
+  <title>
+    .
+  </title>
+```
+
+is allowable, and does not even cause warnings. By [the spec](https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/syntax.html#attributes-2),
+you can leave out the `=…` when an attribute is empty. So, we can kill the `=""` part, which gives us
+
+```html
+<!doctype html>
+<html lang>
+  <title>
+    .
+  </title>
+```
+
+or, removing whitespace,
+
+```html
+<!doctype html><html lang><title>.</title>
+```
+
+Is there a shorter one (that is actually HTML5, validates without warnings on the [HTML5 validator](https://validator.w3.org/), and doesn't "cheat" by messing with doctypes or comments)? Comment below!
diff --git a/short-with-whitespace.html b/short-with-whitespace.html
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+<!doctype html>
+<html lang>
+  <title>
+    .
+  </title>
diff --git a/short.html b/short.html
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+<!doctype html><html lang><title>.</title>
diff --git a/shortest-with-warnings.html b/shortest-with-warnings.html
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+<!doctype html><title>.</title>