[fobside]

i personally hate using <p> tags. i would much rather use two <br> tags instead if i want to start a new paragraph with a line break in between. whats the utility of <p> tags over <br> tags? i really havent found any need to use <p> tags. what do you guys think?

[Demonhood]

I never use <font face = "courier">&lt;P&gt;</font> tags. The paragraph tag is just supposed to make it easy to separate sections of text (by automatically putting space between them).

I prefer the <font face = "courier">&lt;DIV&gt;</font> tag myself. Supposedly it's more correct to use <font face = "courier">&lt;DIV ALIGN="CENTER"&gt;</font> than <font face = "courier">&lt;CENTER&gt;</font>. Why do I use DIV ALIGN as opposed to P ALIGN? I have no clue. Just seems more right to me.

[AlbertWu]

I do the div align center thing instead of the center tag too (too lazy to use teletype)

but why use &lt;P&gt;?

it's a paragraph... I dunno. I use it for blocks of text. For new lines I use BR.

[mindwaves]

It all depends on what you want in your webpage I guess. Most of the time for me, I will use the &lt;p&gt; tags simply because there is less to type and I usually dont use BBedit's palettes.

[Joshua]

Why Does It Hurt When I &lt;P&gt;?



Good read, and sort of indirectly relevant.

[ 06-09-2001: Message edited by: Joshua ]

[fobside]

Originally posted by Joshua:
<STRONG>Why Does It Hurt When I &lt;P&gt;?



Good read, and sort of indirectly relevant.

[ 06-09-2001: Message edited by: Joshua ]</STRONG>

thats an interesting way to title that article. is there a burning sensation when you &lt;p&gt;?

[timster]

From experience, I usually use &lt;p&gt; tags for blocks of content, to establish paragraphs. The &lt;p&gt; tag adds an extra line, and I believe also triggers certain formatting stuff specific to that browser. Not really much different than using two &lt;br&gt; tags in a row.

However, &lt;p&gt; tags can work differently than 2 &lt;br&gt; tags in certain situations, like if there are no text in a section of HTML, and you use &lt;p&gt; then it will not actually do any formatting for some reason.

Generally, what I do is use &lt;br&gt; and &lt;div&gt; tags when I'm laying out graphics and othe page formatting stuff, and use &lt;p&gt; tags when I'm creating content, and formatting content.

To each their own, really. HTML is byzantine, anyway.

[AlbertWu]

Now that I can actually think clearly, I usually use P for blocks of text because I have a special CSS definition for that tag. Defining BODY confuses netscape, so I just define P.

[Millennium]

The utility of the &lt;p&gt; tag is that it defines the structure of your document, not the presentation. This allows a user's browser to present paragraphs in whatever manner is most appropriate for it. You can't go with with &lt;br /&gt; tags.

That alone should be enough reason. If not, here's another one: readability. Your code is more readable if you have tags that clearly show what you're trying to do, as a &lt;p&gt;tag does. This applies to humans and browsers alike, by the way.

And if that's not enough reason for you, it saves a keystroke per paragraph