Is <input> well formed without a <form>?

<input> without a <form> appears valid, yes (at least for html 4.01, look near the end of 17.2.1):

The elements used to create controls generally appear inside a FORM element, but may also appear outside of a FORM element declaration when they are used to build user interfaces. This is discussed in the section on intrinsic events. Note that controls outside a form cannot be successful controls.


Reference to a more up-to-date specification:

HTML 5.2 - W3C Recommendation (14 December 2017)

A form-associated element can have a relationship with a <form> element, which is called the element’s form owner. If a form-associated element is not associated with a <form> element, its form owner is said to be null.


I checked the following with the W3C validator and it confirms this is valid.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
  <title>test</title>
</head>
<body>
  <input type='text' />
</body>
</html>

Tags:

Html

Forms

Input

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