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Asked: 2026-06-04T01:06:25+00:00

In HTML5 is it still appropriate to close a <br> tag with <br />

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In HTML5 is it still appropriate to close a <br> tag with <br />?

This obviously also applies to all other single tags. I realize this doesn’t actually affect how stuff works, but what is best practice here?

someLines of txt <br>            // How you see a lot of people doing it
and then some <br />             // XHTML style! Should I still be doing this? 
ow im not done yet.. <br> </br>  // No one does this right? RIGHT?!
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    From the W3C specification for HTML:

    • The following is a complete list of the void elements in HTML:

      • area, base, br, col, command, embed, hr, img, input, keygen, link, meta, param, source, track, wbr

    • Void elements only have a start tag; end tags must not be specified for void elements.

    • Start tags consist of the following parts, in exactly the following order:

      • A < character.
      • The element’s tag name.
      • Optionally, one or more attributes, each of which must be preceded by one or more space characters.
      • Optionally, one or more space characters.
      • Optionally, a / character, which may be present only if the element is a void element.
      • A > character.

    From this it seems that we can use either <br> or <br/>. However, the end tag </br> is not valid, so don’t use <br> </br>.

    Running the following through the HTML Validation Service indicates as much.

    <!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
  <meta charset="utf-8">
  <title>Testing void elements</title>
</head>
<body>
    some lines of txt <br>
    and then some more <br />
    I'm not done yet... <br> </br> <!-- This line generates an error -->
</body>
</html>

    So use either <br> or <br/>, just make sure you use them consistently.

    Edit: As noted by Brad, <br /> is also valid XHTML, so perhaps it is best to choose this form.

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