As you can see from the specs , HTML 4 has already allowed the html , head and body tags all to be optional.
The HTML5 specification (whose DOCTYPE you see in your example) also says :
The start tag for html elements may be omitted if the first thing inside the html element is not a comment. The end tag of html elements can be omitted if, right after the html element, the comment is not marked with a comment, and the element contains a body element that is either not empty or its start tag has not been omitted.
So, if "standard"? you mean: “Is it legal according to standards?”, the answer is “Yes.”
But if "standard?" you say: “Is this a common thing?”, then the answer: “No, you will find that most web pages in the vast sea of the Internet are usually wrapped in <html> elements.
Please note that this does not apply to XHTML. From the specification :
The root element of the document must be html .
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