alt Hacker NewsA lot of HTML tags never have a body, so it makes no sense to close them. XML has self-closing tag syntax but it wasn't always handled well by browsers.
A p or li tag, at least when used and nested properly, logically ends where either the next one begins or the enclosing block ends. Closing li also creates the opportunity for nonsensical content inside of a list but not in any list item. Of course all of these corner cases are now well specified because people did close their tags sometimes.
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Pxtl • yesterday at 4:05 PM
> XML has self-closing tag syntax but it wasn't always handled well by browsers.
So we'll add another syntax for browsers to handle.
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> A p or li tag, at least when used and nested properly, logically ends where either the next one begins or the enclosing block ends
While this is true I’ve never liked it.
Implies a closing </p> in the middle. But Does not. Obviously with the knowledge of the difference between what span and p represent I understand why but in terms of pure markup it’s always left a bad taste in my mouth. I’ll always close tags whenever relevant even if it’s not necessary.