How to Use the Empty Bracket & Tag Detector
When writing, it's easy to start a link or reference, leave the brackets empty, and forget to fill them in — or to open an HTML or Markdown tag and never close it. These slips are hard to spot by eye and often surface only after publishing. Paste your text here and this tool automatically finds empty (), [], and {} brackets along with unclosed HTML or Markdown tags, reporting the exact line for each.
Three checks run at once. First, it scans for parentheses, brackets, and braces that contain nothing at all. Second, it tracks HTML tags that require a matching close (like div or span) using a stack-based scan, so a missing closing tag is caught even several lines later — tags that never need closing, such as br, img, and input, are automatically skipped. Third, it checks whether Markdown bold (**) and inline code (`) markers appear in odd, unbalanced counts.
Results update live as you type. A clean text shows a confirmation message; any issues appear as a line-by-line list, making this a handy final check before you publish.
Frequently Asked Questions
Empty brackets in a document or Markdown file usually mean a link or reference was started but never filled in. Left unchecked, they turn into broken links or awkward sentences after publishing, so it's worth catching them beforehand.
Tags that never need a closing tag, like br, img, and input, are automatically excluded from the check. If you still see a false positive, double-check the tag name's spelling and capitalization.