Optional Closing Tags in HTML

[paulj]

For as long as I've been validating web pages, I never realized that the closing 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...

[Admin]

The closing tag is only optional (I think) in HTML3.2 and HTML4. If you use any XHTML version, the all tags must be properly closed.

[doctordew]

Yeah I've realized that. When I was writing HTML codes at the begining it took me time to realize I hadn't closed a lot of things, and yet they still work. They get caught in the html validaters though.