> writing closing tags is cumbersome

Personally I've come to appreciate that many closing tags are unnecessary in HTML. Makes many constructs much more concise. Especially with tables:

  <table>
  <caption>Some letters and numbers
  <thead> <tr> <th>Letters <th>Numbers
  <tbody>
    <tr> <td>A <td>1
    <tr> <td>B <td>2
    <tr> <td>C <td>3
  </table>