Does the <li> tag in HTML have an ending tag?

Solution 1:

The li element has an end tag (</li>), but it’s optional in some cases:

An li element's end tag may be omitted if the li element is immediately followed by another li element or if there is no more content in the parent element.

Solution 2:

It is not good coding practice to leave out the end tags.

If you always write the end tags in

1. you will never have an issue if you need to change from HTML to XHTML
2. you will always know where the end of the element is
3. it's cleaner and easier to read.

Semantically, all tags have a beginning tag and an end tag, whether you use them or not is a different matter entirely.

Solution 3:

There is a difference here between HTML and XHTML. XHTML are more strict.

While old regular HTML does not enforce it for all tags, all tags in XHTML must have an ending tag** to validate. Even <br> and <img> is often written as <br /> or <img ... /> to specifically give them ending tags.

XHTML also introduces other requirements, for example:

• All tags must be lowercase
• Quotations must be used on attributes

For more information see HTML to XHTML