How to close the break BR tag

[mariko]

I was taught to write <br/> but then I was later told to write <br />. Which is the correct way and does it make a difference?

[MoinFaraz]

&lt;br/&gt; or &lt;br /&gt;

some tags don't have end {closing} tags, so its always better to close tags

writing <br /> is recommended by newer version of w3c {world wide web consortium}

[Dormilich]

if you not only write, but serve XHTML it doesn’t matter if you write <br/>, <br /> or even <br></br>.

writing <br /> is recommended by newer version of w3c {world wide web consortium}

I’d like to have a link for that.

[mariko]

It seems like it works no matter what I put. Why should it matter? Also, is it better to use css properties?

[jkmyoung]

Some people like to have a space in self closing tags to highlight them when looking through the code.
I prefer conciseness so just put <br/>.

[drhowarddrfine]

@mariko,
I doubt you are serving xhtml and there is no such thing as <br/> in HTML so you should use <br>. Browsers treat <br/> as "tag soup" which is why it works, they're required to do the best they can with it.

[MusoFreak200]

@ mariko

i have always written in the old way...

which is <br> for opening and </br> for closing...

but <br /> is the new way but it won't matter if you are only using html and css but it will if you are using dhtml [aka, javascript, xhtml]

i recomend to use the old way for html...

many others will dissagree

[Dormilich]

but <br /> is the new way but it won't matter if you are only using html and css

it’s not the "new" way, it is an empty element in XML

i recomend to use the old way for html...

many others will dissagree

well, I don’t. always use the proper style. (not something like writing XHTML and serving it as HTML)