HTML 4.0 Transitional validation not completely compliant to

hello all,

as i did not find this topic anywhere, i decided to bring it pu here.

uploading a file for validating returned the following (among other
results):

Current Doctype: HTML 4.0 <http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/REC-html40-19980424/>
Transitional
Error: there is no attribute "VALIGN" for this element (in this HTML
version) 

however,
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/tables.html#adef-valign 
does contain the "valign" attribute for <table> (th, td, tr...) elements .
am i unable to read properly or is this a minor bug?
cheer,
claus