[andrew_]

The lack of closing tags is giving me severe anxiety. I know it's valid non-xml syntax but all the hairs on my neck are at attention.

[pineconewarrior]

I agree, and unless someone has a better reason than the ones I have seen, (saving tiny amount of bytes, less keystrokes, dx) I am convinced it's a bad idea to omit the end tags.

It causes way more trouble than those benefits are worth

[MrVandemar]

I use an aggressively minnimal set of (valid) HTML because I prefer to write in HTML rather than Markdown-flavour-x.

Omitting the closing tags where possible is less about saving keystrokes than minnimising interruptions to my writing flow.

But I wouldn't advocate it for published documents, just my local scribblings.

[nayuki]

To solve your anxiety, may I suggest XHTML? I use it on my website in practice and it works really well.