Void element

A void element is an element in HTML that cannot have any child nodes (i.e., nested elements or text nodes). Void elements only have a start tag; end tags must not be specified for void elements.

In HTML, a void element must not have an end tag. For example, <input type=”text”></input> is invalid HTML. In contrast, SVG or MathML elements that cannot have any child nodes may use an end tag instead of XML self-closing-tag syntax in their start tag.

The HTML, SVG, and MathML specifications define very precisely what each element can contain. So, some combinations of tags have no semantic meaning.