> This is what I mean, except that it more commonly takes one of these
> forms:
>
> <p><p><p><p>
>
> <p><hr>
>
> <p><ul><li>text text<p><li>more text</ul>
Well firstly, the original (CERN, TimBL) description of <P> referred to
it as a paragraph separator, and a lot of net.mythos has grown up in
the interim that promulgates this view.
Also, browsers don't complain much about extra <p> elements, so beginners put
them in "for luck" in all sorts of places:
text text text
<p>
<h2>subheading</h2>
On being asked why they put in the <p>, they will typically say "because
I had finished the paragraph" or "to make the subheading start on a new
line" (or, more commonly "dunno").On being asked to remove it, for example
bon being told the <h2> will do that anyway, they will typically say
"why? it doesn't seem to hurt?"
The other reason you will see spurious <p> is pages which use Netscape
extensions, in particular left or right aligned images. Throwing in a
couple of <p>s adds enough vertical space (in their browser with their
fonts and window size) to make the next bit of text start under the
image instead of alongside it ;-(
A third reason is that some browsers - Netscape 1.1N for X being one
example that springs to mind - give different presentation depending
on the presence or absence of omissible tags. For example;
<p>stuff <hr>
<p>stuff </p><hr>
The second example is more widely spaced, although both give the same
parse tree.
-- Chris Lilley, Technical Author and JISC representative to W3C +-------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Manchester and North HPC Training & Education Centre | +-------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Computer Graphics Unit, Email: Chris.Lilley@mcc.ac.uk | | Manchester Computing Centre, Voice: +44 161 275 6045 | | Oxford Road, Manchester, UK. Fax: +44 161 275 6040 | | M13 9PL BioMOO: ChrisL | | Timezone: UTC URI: http://info.mcc.ac.uk/CGU/staff/lilley/ | +-------------------------------------------------------------------+