List of HTML Self-Closing Tags

Xah Lee, 2012-03-23, 2013-03-10

This page is a list of HTML elements that do not have a closing tag. They are sometimes called {self-closing, empty, void, singleton} tags.

Here's a complete list of self-closing tags for HTML5.

<area />
<base />
<br />
<col />
<command />
<embed />
<hr />
<img />
<input />
<keygen />
<link />
<meta />
<param />
<source />
<track />
<wbr />

The space before the slash is optional.

For a list of all HTML5 tags, see: HTML5 Tags.

Is the Ending Slash Optional?

• HTML5: the slash is optional.
• HTML4: the slash is technically invalid. However, it's accepted by W3C's HTML validator.
• XHTML: The slash is REQUIRED.

I'd recommend to always add the slash. Because, it provides a visual clue of non-closing tags. It's also technically superior, because if you write scripts to check your HTML, you don't need a lookup table to check which tags doesn't need to be closed.

XHTML Supports Self-Closing Syntax for All Tags

In XML/XHTML, every tag can be self-closed by the ending slash <… />. When you test it, you have to make sure the server is sending the correct Internet media type as XHTML (⁖ application/xhtml+xml), otherwise browsers will treat it as HTML, regardless of the DOCTYPE in your file.

I do NOT recommend self-closing for normal tags.

Reference

• http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec-author-view/Overview.html#contents

Back to HTML5 Tags.