XHTML Strict: br tag inside p tag

Question

I get lots of validation errors because of <br /> inside <p>. If I remove the br tags then it works fine.

Why is it creating a problem?

Answer 1

It's not that the br is inside the p, but rather you're not ending the br with the / character. You have <br> in the code, when it should be <br/>. Which is why the validation error is "end tag for "br" omitted", it's telling you that you've not ended the tag correctly with a /.

Note that in HTML4 it's not required to close the br tag with a final slash, but in XHTML it is required as it's a singleton tag.