BR tag usage: with or without /

Should I use <br> or <br />?
Why and when?

 

http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=473452&highlight=tag+without+xhtml

http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=90410&highlight=tag+without+xhtml

for just 2 of the same threads asking this question this week

 

Thanks
i tried serarching but nothing came out

 

<br /> conform to W3C standard.
every tag must closed.

 

Correctomundo!

 

It is better if you put / in br if you want to validate your XHTML. Better for SE friendly sites.

 

Actually it has nothing to do with search engines. They'll gobble up the sloppiest HTML code you can throw at them just as well as the cleanest most semantic code out there. It'll just take them longer.

 

To add to what Dan said, browsers and anything else do the same. Unless you go full out and serve your XHTML with the proper mime type which has problems of its own, almost anything that parses your code will be indifferent as to whether you use XHTML or good ol' HTML.

 

WTF? Who told you that? I swear these "SEO Experts" are from a different planet.

 

although <br> is the correct syntax for html, i believe w3c is recommending using <br /> in your html anyways in prep for moving to xhtml in the future

 

Long story short, http://validator.w3.org/

 

<br /> is the preferred way but <br> will always work, forever... and the search engines will fetch your pages without any problems. so, no worries

 

use <br> for fastest solution. thx. no need to worry both

 

None of you seem to get it. So allow me to jog your memory.

This is a line break in HTML.<br>

This is a line break in XHTML.<br />

Code (markup):

If you are using HTML, you must use the former. If you are using XHTML, you must use the latter. And if you happen to think that the browser won't care, trust me, it will.

And furthermore, the W3C pushed XHTML years ago - it's pretty much thrown its hands in the air and said that it was a mistake and is now working with WHATWG to develop HTML 5, which ironically won't be ready for prime time for at least another decade.

 

Well, that's not ENTIRELY true Dan. A quirk of the SGML specification is that <br /> should actually parse ok in all browsers regardless of doctype.... it's not necessarily valid HTML, but there's no reason for a parser to choke on it either.

But the validator sure will

 

I never said anything about the browsers' "miraculous" error "handling" did I?

 

Can't believe this thread has so many replies.

 

If you use well-formed xhtml ( <br /> ) you can make tag-level changes to your site using xslt.

 

Might as well forget about Internet Explorer (which still has at least 75-85% of the market btw) and serve that XHTML as an applicaiton of XML then if you do that.