Self closing tags are perfectly valid in HTML 5 and there's nothing wrong with using them. Even if the parser ignores them, they're still useful for the reader.

Self closing tags are perfectly valid in HTML 5 and there's nothing wrong with using them. Even if the parser ignores them, they're still useful for the reader. HTML 5 does not require you to close your paragraph tags either but most people still do it because tag soups are hard to understand.