Posted by Andy Dingley on 10/30/13 12:01

On 28 Jan, 16:02, Jeff <jeff@spam_me_not.com> wrote:

> Why? It's a self closing tag and it works in every browser.

Under HTML (i.e. SGML) <br> is defined as EMPTY in the DTD, so it's
always a "self-closing" element from a single start tag, no matter
what.


> The trend is toward closing every tag you open.

You mean "element", not tag. Secondly, although this observation might
be correct, it's not necessary behaviour outside of SGML. For elements
with content (e.g. <p>) then it's commendable, albeit largely
unnecessary (it can make things clearer to the humans though). However
for <br> it's simply wrong. It's not _harmful_ (this is what permits
Appendix C to work), but it's not something to recommend.

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