Written by Ben Hunt from web design agency Scratchmedia. For more information about his agency visit scratchmedia.co.uk

 

HTML <br> Line Break Tag Reference

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The br HTML tag means line-break, and it inserts a break into a line of text.

Use it to force a line-break within a paragraph of text.

The <br> HTML/xHTML tag

The <br /> tag inserts a manual line-break into a line of text.

When to use the <br> tag (semantic use)

Use the <br /> tag sparingly, only when a paragraph needs to be split into several lines, for example in poetry.

Never use it in place of the <p> tag, to divide text into paragraphs, and never use it for display purposes, to set the width of a body of text, as this won't work at different text-sizes. Use CSS instead.

It's valid in all current versions of HTML and xHTML, and it's a self-closing tag, so it needs the trailing backslash in xHTML: <br />. (In HTML it doesn't require a trailing backslash or a closing tag)

Example of <br> tag use

Here is an example of the <br /> tag used in poetry.

<p>

I wandered lonely as a cloud<br />
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,<br />
When all at once I saw a crowd,<br />
A host, of golden daffodils;

</p>

The Output

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;

Alternatives to the <br> tag

You may also consider using:

<p>
To separate text into paragraphs

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