HTML 5: Is it , , or ?

Question

I\'ve tried checking other answers, but I\'m still confused — especially after seeing W3schools HTML 5 reference.

I thought HTML 4.01 was supposed to \"allow\" singl

Answer 1

I would recommend using
for the following reasons:

1) Text and XML editors that highlight XML syntax in different colours will highlight properly with
but this is not always the case if you use


2)
is backwards-compatible with XHTML and well-formed HTML (ie: XHTML) is often easier to validate for errors and debug

3) Some old parsers and some coding specs require the space before the closing slash (ie:
instead of
) such as the WordPress Plugin Coding spec: http://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/coding-standards/html/

I my experience, I have never come across a case where using
is problematic, however, there are many cases where
or especially
might be problematic in older browsers and tools.