[html5] self-closing tags in html5

Tue Aug 5 05:09:52 PDT 2008

Hi,
No question too stupid, eh? Well here goes...

I was reading a presentation on HTML5[1] which included this:
---
text/html: boilerplate

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>
   <meta charset="utf-8" />
---

Why is the meta element self-closing? I thought self closing tags were  
a product of XML?

I read the Tokenization section of the HTML5 Editor's draft (which I  
think is relevant, I may be wrong) but it sailed right over my head.
[1] http://simon.html5.org/presentations/html5-geekmeet.en

Thanks,
Stephen