I'm aware you're supposed to leave out the closing ?>, but a lot of people don't. In fact, the example on the front page of this project doesn't leave out the t

I'm aware you're supposed to leave out the closing ?>, but a lot of people don't. In fact, the example on the front page of this project doesn't leave out the trailing }}, either, incidentally. As for your little snippet, inverting does make sense: <?php // ... 1000 lines of php ...?><p><?=$message?></p><?... // ... 1000 lines of php ?> But tacky little examples aside, there's nothing stopping <?= tags from working just as they always have once you've escaped into html.