As we know those older IE version do not fully support HTML5 tags. In order to make them understand the new HTML5 tags, we have to include a script in the header of the document. This has to be loaded first before the body that contains the HTML5 tags.
Include if condition that will only if the IE version is under version 9
<!--[if lt IE 9]> <script src="http://html5shiv.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/html5.js"></script> <![endif]-->
This script does not add the ability to support HTML5, it will only help the browser to understand the HTML5 syntax tags. So when you apply style or css for those syntax, they can be displayed properly.