“In honor of the eminently pragmatic William Strunk, Jr. and E.
B. White, I present the XML Elements of Style: the elements you
must follow as you create your own documents. If your XML
document follows these ten basic rules, it qualifies as a
“well-formed XML document.”
| “1. | Begin each document with an XML declaration. The first characters in any XML document should be an XML declaration. The declaration is case-sensitive and looks like this in its simplest form:
The special tag delimiters of <? and ?> distinguish this |
| “2. | Use only one top-level, enclosing document element. The first, outermost element in an XML document is called the document element because its name announces what kind of document it is–<FAQ-List>, <Book>, <Transaction>, <TrackingStatus>, etc.” |
Web Webster has more than 20 years of writing and editorial experience in the tech sector. He’s written and edited news, demand generation, user-focused, and thought leadership content for business software solutions, consumer tech, and Linux Today, he edits and writes for a portfolio of tech industry news and analysis websites including webopedia.com, and DatabaseJournal.com.
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