Saw “=” when expecting an attribute name. Probable cause: Attribute name missing.

Attributes for HTML elements must be defined like name="value". A common issue is missing the =, or repeating the " like in these examples:

<!-- Missing equal sign -->

<p name "value"></p>

<!-- Repeated quotes -->

<p name="value""></p>

End tags in HTML must not have any attributes.

According to the HTML specification, only start tags (also called opening tags) may contain attributes, while end tags must appear as a plain </tagname> with nothing else.

For example, this is invalid and will trigger the error:

<p>Welcome to the site.</p class="welcome">

Correct code removes the attribute from the end tag:

<p>Welcome to the site.</p>

If you need the element to have an attribute, only include it in the start tag:

<p class="welcome">Welcome to the site.</p>

Attributes in HTML elements need to be separated by space, in this example the first line is invalid and the second one is valid:

<a href="page.php"class="big">link</a>

<a href="page.php" class="big">link</a>

A < character has been found when an attribute was expected instead. Check the syntax of the affected tag, it’s probably malformed and a < character inside has been interpreted as an attribute.

For example, this code might cause this issue:

<!-- Malformed img tag -->

<img src="photo.jpg" alt="smiling cat" < />

<!-- Fixed img tag -->

<img src="photo.jpg" alt="smiling cat" />