XML empty elements. An empty element is an element that is complete by itself; it never contains other elements. Rather than being composed of a start tag, data, and an end tag, the empty element is a combined start and end tag.

Empty XML Elements An element with no content is said to be empty. 
In XML, you can indicate an empty element like this: 

<element></element>

or you can use an empty tag, like this (this sort of element syntax is called self-closing): 

<element />

The two forms above produce identical results in an XML parser.