There are HTML tags, such as
, and
, that need no ending tag (
,
Optional closing tags like p
, li
, etc.
It is also worth mentioning that several other tags besides those mentioned in the question don't need a closing tag: they just close automatically when something specified in the standard appears.
For example:
<body>
<p>abc
<p>def
</body>
is equivalent to:
<body>
<p>abc
</p>
<p>def
</p>
</body>
because the p
closes both at:
p
p
closesThis is specified at 12.1.2.4 "Optional tags" https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/syntax.html#optional-tags but I don't think there's an actual name besides "an element with an optional closing tag".
See also: P-end-tag (</p>) is not needed in HTML