Is it wrong to use paragraph tags for html for inputs?

Question

So far I mostly put labels and inputs inside a dedicated paragraph tag :

<p>
    <label for="myInput">Blah</label>
    <input type="text" ... />
</p>

But this tag is made for text paragraph. Is is semantically right to use it this way ? Should a div be used ?

Answer 1

Semantically, no, it is not correct. Your form inputs are not paragraphs in any sense of the word.

If you're a CSS expert, try using <ol> and <li> tags and restyling them to look how you like, since your form fields are an ordered list of items. See A List Apart's article on Prettier Accessible Forms for an example of the HTML and CSS necessary for this format.

Answer 2

You seem to have nearly answered your first question, in that it is semantically not a paragraph, so the use of <p> is -to me- wrong.

The second question of whether or not to use a <div> depends on your useage, but I don't see why not, other than the increasingly bulky code, though that'll probably not add much weight to the page.

My own tendency is to nest the <input /> within the <label> tag, though this is, again, semantically incorrect since the input is not a part of the label, being only its counterpart.

Of course, both ways work and produce much the same visual effect; I've never used an alternative -speech-converter or such- to a GUI browser, so I can't say if it adds weirdness for disabled users.