[clairity]

it doesn't work for even slightly complex documents either. there's been a little meme-fad lately around minimalistic html like this, but to claim it's the "right" way to write html is pompous at best.

not closing tags for instance is really asking for future headaches. sure, it works for a simple text list, but not when it gets even a little complicated (add links, images, buttons, etc.). even worse are p tags, where you have to memorize a whole matrix of what it can contain and what breaks out implicitly. with every insertion/deletion, you need to check the list. it's needless mental drag.

[niconii]

You have to know about what breaks out of <p> tags regardless of whether or not you leave off the end tag, though.

<p><div></div></p> is invalid HTML because <div> ends the paragraph, resulting in an unpaired </p>.

[anjbe]

And not just because of that. In XHTML‐as‐XML, where <div> does not implicitly end the paragraph, what you posted is still invalid because <p> cannot contain <div>.