title: Empty paragraph tags - should I allow in HTML editor or not?
body: <p>I'm using CKEditor 4, which seems to have a default setting of using <code>&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</code> to indicate a blank line. Up to now, I've always seen blank lines in HTML represented by <code>&lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;</code> - ie. not an empty tag.</p>
  
  <p>So CKEditor's default output representing a blank line is, eg:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;p&gt;paragraph before blank line&lt;/p&gt;
  &lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  &lt;p&gt;paragraph after blank line&lt;/p&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The problem is, for a change, IE7,8,9 seems to render this "correctly" as a blank line, whereas Firefox and Chrome do not - they seem to ignore empty <code>&lt;p&gt;</code> and <code>&lt;div&gt;</code> tags, in terms of layout.</p>
  
  <p>So, at the moment, I have to tell CKEditor to include <code>&amp;nbsp;</code> in blank lines (not its default setting for some reason) and, at the back-end, replace any occurrences of empty <code>&lt;p&gt;</code> tags that may slip through.</p>
  
  <p>My question is, what is the gold standard for representing blank lines in HTML? The good-old <code>&lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;</code>, or something else?</p>
  
  <p>Also, given that CKEditor's default setting is an empty <code>&lt;p&gt;</code> tag for blank lines, are Chrome and Firefox wrong to ignore them? Or is IE wrong to render them as blank lines, and CKEditor's default should really be to use <code>&lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;</code>?</p>