Optional Closing Tags in HTML

[Zemfik]

For as long as I've been validating web pages, I never realized that the closing tag was optional in HTML. I feel as if I've missed the boat at times.

While I'm all for trimming excess code, I just cannot for the life of me strip out closing tags because they are optional in HTML. I'd be concerned that something, somewhere would not parse the document correctly if I removed the closing element.

Are my concerns unfounded?