You can't. http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html32-19970114

But why do you want to, HTML 3.2 was superseded by HTML 4.0 in 1997. But CSS is supported, so if you truely want 3.2 level implementation you will have to learn some CSS.

Use simply CSS wasn't take you 2 years to learn! The following is nice and simple solution to background colour:

zippee, the page still didn't validate using your suggestion. Thanks anyway.

I changed the DTD to HTML 4.01 Transitional, and the page validated. I guess for now I'll be using HTML 4.01 Transitional.

Puck - it's all in your mindset. When you realize that CSS was invented to FIX issues with HTML, or to SIMPLIFY/STANDARDIZE HTML (so that we didn't have a lot of custom-to-the-browser tags like "layer") - then perhaps learning CSS won't be such a hurdle for you.

I'm getting along fine without CSS at the moment. I'll probably be forced to learn it at some time, but the heart of my web programming (not web mark up) is PHP. Most (if not all) of my pages are static documents, as enjoyable printed out as they are on the monitor.

I'm kind of oldschool where I believe a web page's value is not in it's technology, but in the content it provides. A friend of mine recently expressed the same thing.

We simply disagree that CSS is unrelated to "content".

In fact, it allows the HTML to be solely content. Ask yourself what "BGCOLOR" has to do with the "content" of your site, and perhaps you'll see my point.

I do see your point.

The point I was trying to make was with or without CSS, my webpage if rendered exactly the same, will be of equal value to the reader. By not learning CSS at this time, I can work on improving what it contains rather than work on making it look exactly the same.