Empty elements
Some HTML elements will never have content. Generally, these are elements that insert something into the page, such as an image or a form field.
Perhaps the simplest of the empty elements is the br or “break”
element. As an empty element, it has no closing tag. It looks like this:
<br>
The br element is a bad element. It is probably the most abused
element in all of HTML. Possible exception: headings. The br element is used to add a line break. For example, when printing lines of
poetry. This:
<p>
….the Cambridge ladies do not care, above<br />
Cambridge if sometimes in its box of<br />
sky lavender and cornerless,the<br />
moon rattles like a fragment of angry candy
</p>
Renders like this:
….the Cambridge ladies do not care, above
Cambridge if sometimes in its box of
sky lavender and cornerless,the
moon rattles like a fragment of angry candy
That seems reasonable. So what’s so bad about the br element?
Simply this: devs often abuse it for spacing. They’ll
use a string of br elements to push two bits of content apart.
Stylesheets are used for spacing; not HTML elements!
Use the br element sparingly, if at all.
There are a few other empty elements, but we will cover them as we need them: just in time.
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