Question

I know that in HTML4.0

<p>

tag is not a block-level element.
What about in XHTML 1.0?

Thank you

This is the reference for HTML4.0
http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/text.html

The P element represents a paragraph. It cannot contain block-level elements (including P itself).

Was that my misinterpretation?

Answer 1

As far as I know, p is a block-level element going back to at least HTML 3.2.

Most elements that can appear in the
document body fall into one of two
groups: block level elements which
cause paragraph breaks, and text level
elements which don’t. Common block
level elements include H1 to H6
(headers), P (paragraphs) LI (list
items), and HR (horizontal rules).
Common text level elements include EM,
I, B and FONT (character emphasis), A
(hypertext links), IMG and APPLET
(embedded objects) and BR (line
breaks). Note that block elements
generally act as containers for text
level and other block level elements
(excluding headings and address
elements), while text level elements
can only contain other text level
elements. The exact model depends on
the element.

http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html32

And XHTML 1.0 is really the same exact thing as HTML 4.01 except less lenient. Meaning the elements serve the same purpose, are the same “level” ( block, inline, table ), just these rules apply:

• all elements and attribute names must appear in lower case
• all attribute values must be quoted
• non-Empty Elements require a closing tag
• empty elements are terminated using a space and a trailing slash
• no attribute minimization is allowed
• in strict XHTML, all inline elements must be contained in a block element

EDIT:

The P element represents a paragraph.
It cannot contain block-level elements
(including P itself).

This just means that the p cannot own other block level elements inside, meaning because it is block-level it cannot contain itself.