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HTML

When is the slash used with self-contained carrots? /> vs >

Hi, In my html class when we used self-contained carrots (<blahblahblah> vs. <blah></blah>), the phrase was closed with a simple ending carrot as opposed to slash-carrot.

I noticed in this lesson that the canonical rule on duplicate pages is closed with a slash-carrot.

Could someone please tell me why this is? Is is a different html version, or is it standard with these type of canonical links?

Thanks very much for any input you might have!

4 Answers

For self-closing tags, the / prior to the closing sign in HTML5 is optional. It will work either included or not included.

In HTML4 the / prior to the closing sign was technically invalid, but many browsers and validators supported it and gave the coder some leniency.

Jonathan Grieve
MOD
Jonathan Grieve
Treehouse Moderator 91,254 Points

I tend to use them when i'm not sure as they're recognised and highlighted in my text editor as self closing tags. :-)

Thank you very much, that clears it up!

<b>it's good to always use it.</b>