title: Why does XML have such verbose closing tags?
body: <p>Yes, this probably shouldn't bug me.</p>
  
  <p>But it does!!</p>
  
  <p>Why does XML have such verbose closing tags? Not only does it make documents uglier for humans, it needlessly introduces the risk of mismatched (or misspelled!) opening and closing tags.</p>
  
  <p>Even if we wanted to require closing tags, <em>why</em> do we need to include the name of the opening tag inside the closing tag?  There is never any ambiguity in XML, because innermost tags <strong>must</strong> be closed before closing outer tags!</p>
  
  <p>For example:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;thisIsSomewhatLong&gt;
      Hello, world!
  &lt;/thisIsSomewhatLong&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>...is so much more verbose than:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;thisIsSomewhatLong&gt;
      Hello, world!
  &lt;/&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>And it doesn't resolve <strong>any</strong> ambiguity, either for humans or for computers.</p>
  
  <p>Does anyone know what the rationale is for this rule? What risks are avoided by disallowing empty closing tags?</p>