Sometimes in HTML, but not in XHTML 1.0. Current HTML permits omitting </td> and </tr> only in specific positions. XHTML 1.0 requires both end tags because these are non-empty elements. Whether a browser applies HTML or XML parsing rules depends on the response’s Content-Type, not simply on the markup’s doctype or appearance.
When may HTML omit </td> and </tr>?
The WHATWG HTML Living Standard allows omission under defined conditions; “optional” does not mean the tags can be removed anywhere. Its table rules, on a page last updated 29 September 2026, specify:
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</td>may be omitted if the cell is immediately followed by another<td>or<th>, or if there is no more content in the cell’s parent.</tr>may be omitted if the row is immediately followed by another<tr>, or if there is no more content in its parent.
These conditions are different: a following cell permits omission of a cell end tag, while a following row permits omission of a row end tag. For the complete rules, see the WHATWG table-element requirements.
What changes in XHTML 1.0?
XHTML 1.0 is an XML application, not merely HTML written with stricter-looking syntax. The W3C specification says end tags are required for non-empty elements; td and tr are non-empty elements. Omitting either end tag therefore makes an XHTML 1.0 document not well-formed. The rule appears in W3C XHTML 1.0, section 4.3; XML’s general element syntax is described in the XML 1.0 specification.
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So the answer to “will a browser choke?” depends on how the response is parsed. Under XML parsing, a missing required end tag is a well-formedness error. Under HTML parsing, an omission allowed by the HTML rules is accepted.
Why the response’s Content-Type matters
A browser selects the relevant parsing rules from the response media type. A document served as application/xhtml+xml is parsed as XML; one served as text/html is parsed as HTML—even if its author intended XHTML syntax. W3C’s XHTML Media Types guidance explains this distinction and notes that XHTML delivered as text/html is not processed as XML, so XML well-formedness errors may go undetected.
Check the actual response Content-Type rather than inferring parser behavior from a doctype, an xmlns attribute, or a filename. A page rendering in a browser does not, by itself, prove that the document is valid XHTML.
Could omitted tags explain a table-formatting problem?
Not enough information is available to identify the cause of the formatting issue described in the 28 October 2008 SitePoint discussion. The post did not include the source document, response headers, browser, or a reproducible example. Adding explicit tags may have coincided with a change that fixed the display, but the report does not establish why.
To diagnose a similar issue:
- Inspect the response headers and note the actual
Content-Type. - Validate the document against the syntax it claims to use: HTML for
text/html, or XML/XHTML well-formedness forapplication/xhtml+xml. - Reduce the table to a minimal example that still reproduces the formatting problem, then check its markup and styles.
Should you include the closing tags anyway?
Usually, yes: explicit </td> and </tr> tags make table structure easier to read and maintain, and they are required if the document is served as XHTML/XML. In HTML, they remain valid even where omission is permitted; omitting them is an option only when the specification’s conditions are met.
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