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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-25T02:44:25+00:00

When is it appropriate to use a closing tag and when a slash is

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When is it appropriate to use a closing tag and when a slash is enough?

<div></div>

vs. 

<div />
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    You can only use a self closing tag <div /> if your DOCTYPE is set to XHTML as this is borrowed from XML where you can have self closing tags. You can’t have it if your DOCTYPE is set to HTML 4.01 or HTML 5.

    http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/

    I’m not sure your exact use case for wanting this, but if it’s for clearing floats, you can do this instead and not have to worry about compatibility issues, especially with IE if it kicks into emulation mode.

    <style type="text/css">
.clear-fix {
    clear: both !important;
    display: block !important;
    font-size: 0 !important;
    line-height: 0 !important;
    border: none !important;
    padding: 0 !important;
    margin: 0 !important;
    list-style: none !important;
}
</style>
<br class="clear-fix" />
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