Question

I continuously find places where I need to use the <br /> tag because CSS can’t do what I need. Isn’t the <br /> considered part of the ‘design’ and not part of document structure? What is the acceptable usage for it? Should the same rules also apply to the <hr />?

Here is an example of where I feel forced to use the <br /> tag:

I want to display this:

<address>1234 south east Main St. Somewhere, Id 54555</address>

like this:

 1234 south east main st. Somewhere, Id 54555 

Answer 1

There is nothing wrong with using <br /> or <hr />. Neither of them are deprecated tags, even in the new HTML 5 draft spec (relevant spec info). In fact, it’s hard to state correct usage of the <br /> tag better than the W3C itself:

The following example is correct usage of the br element:

<p>P. Sherman<br>
42 Wallaby Way<br>
Sydney</p>

br elements must not be used for separating thematic groups in a paragraph.

The following examples are non-conforming, as they abuse the br element:

<p><a …>34 comments.</a><br>
<a …>Add a comment.<a></p>

<p>Name: <input name=’name’><br>
Address: <input name=’address’></p>

Here are alternatives to the above, which are correct:

<p><a …>34 comments.</a></p>
<p><a …>Add a comment.<a></p>

<p>Name: <input name=’name’></p>
<p>Address: <input name=’address’></p>

<hr /> can very well be part of the content as well, and not just a display element. Use good judgement when it comes to what is content and what is not, and you’ll know when to use these elements. They’re both valid, useful elements in the current W3C specs. But with great power comes great responsibility, so use them correctly.

Edit 1:

Another thought I had after I first hit ‘post’ – there’s been a lot of anti-<table> sentiment among web developers in recent years, and with good reason. People were abusing the <table> tag, using it for site layout and formatting. That’s not what it’s for, so you shouldn’t use it that way. But does that mean you should never use the <table> tag? What if you actually have an honest-to-goodness table in your code, for example, if you were writing a science article and you wanted to include the periodic table of the elements? In that case, the use of <table> is totally justified, it becomes semantic markup instead of formatting. It’s the same situation with <br />. When it’s part of your content (ie, text that should break at those points in order to be correct English), use it! When you’re just doing it for formatting reasons, it’s best to try another way.