title: Why do internal TABLE sections have to go THEAD TFOOT TBODY to validate?
body: <p>I often use THEAD, TBODY, and TFOOT elements to divide my data tables into sections that can be addressed separately with CSS.  I also understand that there is always an implicit TBODY tag.</p>
  
  <p>What puzzles me is the order that these have to go in to validate.  THIS table will validate:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" 
    "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"&gt;
  &lt;html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en"&gt;
  &lt;head&gt;
      &lt;meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" /&gt;
      &lt;title&gt;Table Validation Test&lt;/title&gt;
  &lt;/head&gt;
  &lt;body&gt;
  
  &lt;table&gt;
  
  &lt;thead&gt;
  &lt;tr&gt;
      &lt;th scope="col"&gt;Enemies List&lt;/th&gt;
  &lt;/tr&gt;
  &lt;/thead&gt;
  
  &lt;tfoot&gt;
  &lt;tr&gt;
      &lt;td&gt;&amp;copy; Bomb Voyage&lt;/td&gt;
  &lt;/tr&gt;
  &lt;/tfoot&gt;
  
  &lt;tbody&gt;
  &lt;tr&gt;
      &lt;td&gt;Mr. Incredible&lt;/td&gt;
      &lt;td&gt;Elastigirl&lt;/td&gt;
      &lt;td&gt;Gazer Beam&lt;/td&gt;
  &lt;/tr&gt;
  &lt;/tbody&gt;
  
  &lt;/table&gt;
  &lt;/body&gt;
  &lt;/html&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>But this one will not:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" 
    "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"&gt;
  &lt;html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en"&gt;
  &lt;head&gt;
      &lt;meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" /&gt;
      &lt;title&gt;Table Validation Test&lt;/title&gt;
  &lt;/head&gt;
  &lt;body&gt;
  
  &lt;table&gt;
  
  &lt;thead&gt;
  &lt;tr&gt;
      &lt;th scope="col"&gt;Enemies List&lt;/th&gt;
  &lt;/tr&gt;
  &lt;/thead&gt;
  
  &lt;tbody&gt;
  &lt;tr&gt;
      &lt;td&gt;Mr. Incredible&lt;/td&gt;
      &lt;td&gt;Elastigirl&lt;/td&gt;
      &lt;td&gt;Gazer Beam&lt;/td&gt;
  &lt;/tr&gt;
  &lt;/tbody&gt;
  
  
  &lt;tfoot&gt;
  &lt;tr&gt;
      &lt;td&gt;&amp;copy; Bomb Voyage&lt;/td&gt;
  &lt;/tr&gt;
  &lt;/tfoot&gt;
  
  &lt;/table&gt;
  &lt;/body&gt;
  &lt;/html&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The valid one goes HEAD, FOOT, BODY; which does not make any sense.</p>
  
  <p>Putting the foot at the bottom of the table would maintain the analogy between the table and a human body.  But for some reason, this order is considered invalid.</p>
  
  <p>Anyone know why?</p>