The <br/> Tag in HTML 5

The break tag (<br/>) is used to force a line break in HTML code. It is one of the inline tags used to group and separate content in HTML. A similar tag, the <wbr/> tag, provides a way to suggest an optional line break to the web browser.

According to the HTML 5 specification, br elements must be used only for line breaks that are actually part of the content, as in poems or addresses. For example:

This is an actual example of the <br> tag example code below.

For content other than things like addresses and poems, there are various alternatives to the <br/> tag for HTML code that can control how the content is laid out over multiple lines:

• an unordered list with list item tags
• a paragraph tag for each line
• white-space: pre for preformatted text