# Internal encoding declaration X disagrees with the actual encoding of the document (“utf-8”).
> Canonical HTML version: https://rocketvalidator.com/html-validation/internal-encoding-declaration-x-disagrees-with-the-actual-encoding-of-the-document-utf-8
> Attribution: Rocket Validator (https://rocketvalidator.com)
> License: CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
A `` element declares a legacy encoding such as `iso-8859-1`, but the document is actually read as UTF-8.
A browser picks a page's character encoding by checking several sources in a fixed order. A byte order mark at the very start of the file wins, then the `charset` parameter of the HTTP `Content-Type` header, and only after those the `` or `` declaration inside the page. When the server sends `Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8`, the browser reads the page as UTF-8 and ignores the `` element. The validator reports the mismatch because the markup and the server say different things.
This usually comes from an old template or CMS theme that still carries `charset=iso-8859-1` after the server and the files moved to UTF-8. The page may look fine today, but the declaration takes over whenever the header is missing, for example when the file is opened from disk or moved to a server that doesn't send a charset. The browser then decodes the UTF-8 bytes with the declared encoding, and an `é` turns into `é`.
HTML only allows UTF-8, so the fix is to declare `utf-8`. The shorter `` is equivalent to the `http-equiv` form. Put it first inside `` so it falls within the first 1024 bytes of the document. The same change clears the related errors the validator reports about the `charset` value.
If accented characters on the page already show up as `�`, the file itself is saved in the legacy encoding while the server announces UTF-8. Re-save the file as UTF-8 in your editor before changing the declaration.
## Invalid example
On a page served as UTF-8:
```html
Café menu
```
## Valid example
```html
Café menu
```