HTML Guides for tag name

The document ends in the middle of a tag name, as in a final </html with no closing >, so the parser throws that unfinished tag away.

The validator only reports this when the last characters of the file are < or </ followed by letters, with nothing after them: </html, </body, <div, even </ht. The parser is still reading the tag name when the file runs out. Other endings get other messages. A bare < or </ gives End of file after “<”., and a space or line break after the name gives Saw end of file without the previous tag ending with “>”.

Usually the file has just lost its last character. The final > of a template got deleted during an edit, or a build step trimmed one byte too many. A response that the server stopped sending partway through ends the same way. If the lost tag is </html or </body, the page still looks right, because browsers close those elements at the end of the file anyway. A start tag like <script or <div is different: that element never makes it into the page.

Add the missing > or the rest of the tag. If the source file already ends with the full tag, fetch the page with curl and check the last line the server sends. A cut-off copy means something trims the HTML after the template renders it, such as an output filter or a proxy.

Invalid example

The file ends right after </html:

<!DOCTYPE html>

<html lang="en">

<head>

<title>Opening hours</title>

</head>

<body>

<p>Open daily from 10:00 to 18:00.</p>

</body>

</html

Valid example

<!DOCTYPE html>

<html lang="en">

<head>

<title>Opening hours</title>

</head>

<body>

<p>Open daily from 10:00 to 18:00.</p>

</body>

</html>