Optional Closing Tags in HTML

[Carrym]

For as long as I've been validating web pages, I never realized that the closing </head> tag was optional in HTML. I feel as if I've missed the boat at times. ;)

While I'm all for trimming excess code, I just cannot for the life of me strip out closing tags because they are optional in HTML. I'd be concerned that something, somewhere would not parse the document correctly if I removed the closing </head> element.

Are my concerns unfounded?

[kBisk]

i agree, there is no reason to remove any closing tags like </head>, especially when considering validation and code structure.

[bwh2]

just because a particular browser will still render pages if closing tags are omitted does not mean the closing tags are optional in terms of being syntactically correct.

[evildrummer]

No tags should go unended, that is final, all HTML tags should either have theyre own:


<tag></tag>

or


<tag />

[brndn]

closing all tags is good practice. The amount of times I have had glitches occur due to one tag being unclosed or incorrectly closed, its not worth the pain really.:+)