[Twisol]

HTML is actually a dialect of SGML. XHTML was an attempt to move to an XML-based foundation, but XML's strictness in parsing worked against it, and eventually folks just standardized how HTML parsers should interpret ill-formed HTML instead.

[thayne]

I do wish they at least allowed you to make any tag self closing so I can do <div class="my-element" /> without needing to include a </div>

[michaelbarton]

Ah good to know. It’s interesting (to me) how similar they look to each other but you and other commentators below mention how they’re more like distant cousins

I suppose the proof is in the parsing