jQuery will always close the tag. Even thinks like:
$("body").append("<div>Just an example")
will append:
<div>Just an example</div>

Im just wondering about the way it is right now. <div /> isn't valid XHTML.The jQuery function just returns the supposed result right now because it adds the attributes directly to the element.

Example:
$("body").append("<div />Just an second example")
will append:
<div></div>Just an second example