When creating HTML emails, should we use html, head, body tags?

Question

In my email views, I usually just do something like...

   
Name
   
Value

Should

Answer 1

Many of the posts on this thread are rather old, and as a result they are no longer accurate.

These days HTML emails should include a doctype, html and body declaration if you intend to do anything fancy at all.

There are a multitude of guides on this subject which can help you learn how to properly code HTML Email, but most of them disregard the specifics of a doctype, which is how I stumbled on your question.

I suggest you read the following 2 posts which are from reputable teams familiar with the various problems:

campaign monitor's take

email on acid's take