You can't just put the / everywhere, and you still have to differentiate between non-empty and empty elements (e.g. div and br).<p>If you write XHTML, and don't follow these two non-XML rules (and indeed the other 14), then it'll probably break when you give it to an HTML parser or browser:<p><a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/guidelines.html#C_2" rel="nofollow">http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/guidelines.html#C_2</a><p>C.2 Empty Elements: Include a space before the trailing / and &#62; of empty elements, e.g. &#60;br /&#62;, &#60;hr /&#62; and &#60;img src="karen.jpg" alt="Karen" /&#62;. Also, use the minimized tag syntax for empty elements, e.g. &#60;br /&#62;, as the alternative syntax &#60;br&#62;&#60;/br&#62; allowed by XML gives uncertain results in many existing user agents.<p><a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/guidelines.html#C_3" rel="nofollow">http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/guidelines.html#C_3</a><p>C.3. Element Minimization and Empty Element Content: Given an empty instance of an element whose content model is not EMPTY (for example, an empty title or paragraph) do not use the minimized form (e.g. use &#60;p&#62; &#60;/p&#62; and not &#60;p /&#62;).