Is an empty href valid?

matthew picture matthew · Apr 12, 2011 · Viewed 158.8k times · Source

One of our web developers uses the following html as a placeholder for styling a drop down list.

<a href="" class="arrow"></a>

Is this considered anchor tag valid?

Since there is no href value, it shows up as broken on some of our link checker reports.

Answer

SLaks picture SLaks · Apr 12, 2011

It is valid.

However, standard practice is to use href="#" or sometimes href="javascript:;".