> Even more pointless is a pretentious space before the slash It could also be an habit, and not really a harmful one. You can argue against it with convincing

> Even more pointless is a pretentious space before the slash It could also be an habit, and not really a harmful one. You can argue against it with convincing arguments, but in the end, there's nothing fundamentally wrong with it. It's understood by the parser. The space before the slash once was advised for compatibility with old browsers when writing polyglot html. Some old browsers would not understand the slash, but this would not be an issue with a space. This is mostly irrelevant today but habits stick. And with the gotcha exposed by my sibling comment, maybe it's better to stick with the space after all when using the slash. And I can see how wanting to explicitly close the tag is compelling, even if it has its drawbacks.