Duplicate

Why don’t self-closing script tags work?

I'm writing an ASP page, which have some Javascript code in JS file for client-side authentication.

While using this code prevented from my server-side code from working:

<script src="../../JavaScript/BaseJS.js" type="text/javascript" defer="defer" />

This code somehow worked:

<script src="../../JavaScript/BaseJS.js" type="text/javascript" defer="defer"></script>

Duplicate

Why don’t self-closing script tags work?

I'm writing an ASP page, which have some Javascript code in JS file for client-side authentication.

While using this code prevented from my server-side code from working:

<script src="../../JavaScript/BaseJS.js" type="text/javascript" defer="defer" />

This code somehow worked:

<script src="../../JavaScript/BaseJS.js" type="text/javascript" defer="defer"></script>

• javascript
• html
• xhtml

Share Improve this question Follow edited Jun 20, 2020 at 9:12 CommunityBot 111 silver badge asked Feb 22, 2009 at 11:41 Oz RadianoOz Radiano 78922 gold badges1111 silver badges3030 bronze badges 1

• this is part of the standard, script tags cannot be self closed. – DevelopingChris Commented Feb 27, 2009 at 2:00

Add a ment  | 

3 Answers 3

Sorted by: Reset to default 14

The HTML4.01 manual section defining the SCRIPT element, states:

18.2.1 The SCRIPT element

...

Start tag: required, End tag: required

Am I right in saying you're testing with IE? This is a known bug. (I'm sure there are lots of other pages referring to it too.)

EDIT: In fact, there's another Stack Overflow question about this too.

<script> can only self-close in XHTML, not HTML.