HTML 5: Is it , , or ?

Question

I\'ve tried checking other answers, but I\'m still confused — especially after seeing W3schools HTML 5 reference.

I thought HTML 4.01 was supposed to \"allow\" singl

Answer 1

Most of the cases in HTML, the tags are in pair. But for a line break you don't need a pair of tags. Therefore to indicate this, HTML uses
format.
is the right one. Use that format.


tag has no end tag in HTML In XHTML, the
tag must be properly closed, like this:


In XML every tag must be closed. XHTML is an extension of XML, hence all the rules of XML must be followed for valid XHTML. Hence even empty tags (nodes without child nodes) like
should be closed. XML has a short form called self closing tags for empty nodes. You can write

as
. Hence in XHTML
is used.

HTML is very lenient in this regard, and there is no such rule. So in HTML empty nodes like


---

etc are written without the closing forward slash.

HTML

XHTML

Not all tags can be self closed. For example, a tag like