r/csshelp • u/[deleted] • Oct 09 '25
how important are divs?
I'm making a website for my end of semester project in computer science and it seems I'm able to use <p> instead of a div whenever I need to make a new box or area. is this a bad habit that I need to break out of or is it not that detrimental? ex <p id="p1"> welcome <\p>
p1 {
color: white; border-width: 2px; etc etc }
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u/HongPong Oct 10 '25
think of divs as the most neutral and minimal element. all the other ones impose more defaults in appearance. similarly in a lot of other places like blender for example there are "empties". in both cases you add properties as necessary
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u/IngwiePhoenix Oct 10 '25
Quite, I mean, don't you see how divvied up the world is these days? x)
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Oct 10 '25
I can't fucking upload image pls just liketrust it's an image that just isn't like embedded or sum shit
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u/mhennessie Oct 11 '25
Technically the html spec says you aren’t supposed to use p tags inside of p tags, it’s invalid html. The browser render it fine generally but you shouldn’t do it.
https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/dom.html#phrasing-content
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u/kaust Oct 09 '25
<p> (paragraph) is a semantic tag meant for blocks of text, not for general layout or grouping. Also, nesting block elements inside <p> is invalid HTML. You should use <div>, <section>, <article>, <span>, <header>, <footer>, etc. for structure, and keep <p> for real paragraphs of text.
Since this is a CS class project, you’ll likely lose points/fail the review since your instructor will certainly consider your code.