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

"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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Received on Tuesday, 19 December 1995 06:21:22 UTC