lol Scott, Adam and I already discussed this deprecation thing before he made that 2nd post about it being deprecated, so I "thought" he understood the concept of what is and isn't deprecated and who says so, but I was apparently wrong lol.
It's not a dictionary that determines what is and isn't deprecated in HTML it's is the w3 that does. If the w3 doesn't say it's deprecated (and it most definitely does not) then it is not deprecated.
List of HTML Tags showing that they fully state what is and isn't deprecated on it:
<b> Defines bold text STF
<base /> Specifies the base URL/target for all relative URLs in a document STF
<basefont />
Deprecated. Specifies a default color, size, or font for all the text in a document TF
<bdo> Overrides the current text direction STF
<big> Defines big text STF
<blockquote> Defines a long quotation STF
<body> Defines the document's body STF
<br /> Defines a single line break STF
<button> Defines a clickable button STF
Notice that the <br /> tag is not shown as deprecated.
If you're going to quote the statements from the site you need to state what "they" say not what "we as users" interpret it as. It is not "supported" for HTML5 or most HTML versions, but it "is supported" and definitely in use for 4.01 Strict and for XHTML which are both very valid versions of the code as stated below:
Differences Between HTML and XHTML
In HTML the <br> tag has no end tag.
In XHTML the <br> tag must be properly closed, like this: <br />.
So, it may be no longer "needed" for HTML5, but no where on the page of the HTML5 or HTML tag lists or descriptions for the <br> or <br /> tags, does it state that it is deprecated in any way.
Basically in the end it's not a term that you throw around just because "you" feel it is deprecated lol. I'm surprised that no one else called "him" out already on this
Now having said all that, I agree that it's not necessary, and I think if people are smart they would use the HTML5 doctype so they don't "need" the closing tag <br /> code as it supports pretty much anything that came before it so you can use any <br> type tag you want to and it's supported and backwards compatible for the older HTML versions. But we can't force them to and telling them incorrect information is going to end up confusing people not helping them if they aren't familiar yet with HTML5 and it's code system
