Re: When to use <p></p>

lilley (lilley@afs.mcc.ac.uk)
Tue, 19 Dec 1995 11:20:52 +0000 (GMT)


"This is rumour control. Here are the facts" (Aliens 3)

Michael Godsey made the following assertion:

> <P> is not a container object, so there is no </P>. You can throw it
> in, and most browsers won't mind. It's not a required element, though.
> <P> is just a paragraph seperator, not a container.
>
> Hope that helps!

On the contrary, such misinformation is damaging. Please check your
sources before posting answers. I refer you to RFC 1866.

For anyone that was confused:

1) p is a container. The start tag is <p> and the end tag is </p>

2) the end tag can be omitted (but is never wrong), because the DTD was
expressly designed that way. The parser can reliably infer the missing </p>

3) This example contains some text in a paragraph and some text not in
a paragraph. Once you start using stylesheets, these two may be rendered
differently:

<h2>Subheading</h2>
Text not actually in a paragraph
<p>
Text in a paragraph

If you want them both to be in a paragraph, use:

<h2>Subheading</h2>
<p>
Text now in a paragraph
<p>
Text in a paragraph

-- 
Chris Lilley, Technical Author and JISC representative to W3C 
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