i am an idiot guys
All my life I thought the basic HTML structure was
<!Doctype HTML> <head> </head> <html> <body> </body> </html>
You can also put it on individual elements, e.g. <p>The German word for cat is <span lang="de">Katze</span>.</p>
<p>The German word for cat is <span lang="de">Katze</span>.</p>