Question

I’ve worked at few places and seen two different methods of doing a section or line break in HTML.

One way I’ve seen it done is like this:

<div class="placeholder-100pct">&nbsp;</div>

And the other is just using plain old <br />.

Any benefit to one over the other or would it be just a matter of style?

Answer 1

Use <br/> when you want a new line in a paragraph, like so:

<p>Hi Josh, <br/> How are you?</p>

This might be useful when writing an address:

<p>John Dough<br/>
1155 Saint. St. #33<br/>
Orlando, FL 32765
</p>

Using a div will automatically give you a new line, but if you want a space between two elements, you can use a margin on the div.

Do not use <br/> to get some space between two divs:

<!-- This is not preferred -->
<div>Hello</div>
<br/>
<div>Something else here</div>

Hope this helps