title: When to use <br> line breaks vs CSS positioning?
body: <p>I've often wondered about the proper use of a  <code>&lt;br&gt;</code> line break.  Seems that often they are incorrectly used for positioning or clearing content where CSS should instead be used.</p>
  <p>W3schoools.org says to use <code>&lt;br&gt;</code> for blank lines, but not for <a href="http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_br.asp" rel="nofollow noreferrer" title="w3schools.org HTML: br - line break">creating or separating</a> paragraphs.  Looking over <a href="http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/Overview.html#the-br-element" rel="nofollow noreferrer" title="W3C HTML5: 4.6.24 - The br element">W3C HTML5 spec draft</a>, it's a little clearer that the <code>&lt;br&gt;</code> would be used when content requires a line break such as lines of an address or blank lines in poetry, where intended by the author.</p>
  <p>But I'm still interested in any further clarification or input anyone else may have.  I often find myself opting not to use <code>&lt;br&gt;</code> tags but instead just styling elements with the desired clears, margins, paddings, etc. to create the space desired.</p>
  <p>Not that it's supremely important, but here's the example that got me thinking about this where a popular (&quot;authoritative&quot;) site used a <code>&lt;br&gt;</code> that I'm not sure is quite semantic.  Here I would've just cleared the <code>&lt;a&gt;</code> from it's siblings via CSS:</p>
  <pre><code>&lt;p&gt;Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur tempor laborum.&lt;/p&gt;
  &lt;br&gt;
  &lt;a href=&quot;#readmore&quot;&gt;more &amp;gt;&amp;gt;&lt;/a&gt;
  </code></pre>