What is an HTML empty element?

[RayL]

We're told that <br> is an empty element and it has no end tag.

Is "<p></p>" an empty element?  It has no content ("stuff between the start/end tags").

Is it true that "empty elements" have no end tag?

If it is, then why does "<p></p>" have an end tag, given it has no content and is therefore an empty tag?

 

[Ingolme]

An empty element is one which has no purpose for the content between the tags. Empty elements do not need an end tag and shouldn't have one.

While <p></p> is empty, it's not considered an "empty element" because when there is something between the tags, it's meaningful.

This is not common practice, but specific elements such as <p> and <li> actually can work without a closing tag. This is because the browser know that the content of a <p> element must end as soon as it runs into another block element or when its parent ends.

[dsonesuk]

Just because a bucket is empty does not mean it is no longer a bucket..its just a empty bucket. Same goes for empty p, div etc. A tag of br, hr, input, img etc is referred to as a void element. It can never hold, contain content.

[bhawna06]

Element without an enclosing tag is known as an empty element. The closing tags cannot be added to empty elements. No child nodes exist for empty elements. As a result, empty tags are self-closing or void in nature, and are not container tags. For input, meta-data, area, etc., empty elements can be used to embed images, lists, breaks, horizontal lines, hyperlinks, etc. For instance, <p> tag had a closing tag hence it was not an empty element.