First, I had no idea that "/>" had a name. Solidus.<p>Second, the article is unclear on the "optional" nature of the solidus.<p>I'm pretty sure that the use of the solidus depends on whether you are using an HTML or XHTML serialization.<p>If you are sending the page as content-type text/html, you need to follow HTML format and leave out the solidus (that is, you follow the same rules as you would for HTML4).<p>If you are using the XHTML serialization you need to be using XML syntax and send the page as application/xml or application/xhtml+xml.