You could say its my favorite HTML tag. Why is it so good? Why do I like it so much? Am I even a real designer? Find out!

In some situations you have two different blocks of content and you’d like to keep them separate. Some additional padding would certainly do the trick but sometimes you just really want something with a little more… something.

bam

The <hr> tag is here to adorn this great divide with exactly what your looking for. If you’ve seen some of the websites or front ends I’ve designed (probably because already know because we’re friends or something), you might notice that there’s probably a somewhat excessive use of the horizontal rules. Why? Because they’re great. I love them.

Do I have an actual professional design reason for using them so often? I probably could, but I don’t. I just like ‘em. They’re clean and timeless. The <hr> tag used to be just a horizontal line used to organize things but as of HTML 5 it has since been referred too as a “thematic break”.

By creating a more visually involved separation in between sections, we can see something more like a play unfolding instead of just plain old text on a page. It breaks up the story you tell into parts and tells the reader “hey dude, take a break for a second because stuff’s about to change, for real”.

The <hr> has been around for quite some time, and while its use has changed and improved it will always hold a place in web design and in my heart.