diff --git a/spacy/displacy/render.py b/spacy/displacy/render.py
index 758dc07d5..361e38088 100644
--- a/spacy/displacy/render.py
+++ b/spacy/displacy/render.py
@@ -567,7 +567,7 @@ class EntityRenderer:
             for i, fragment in enumerate(fragments):
                 markup += escape_html(fragment)
                 if len(fragments) > 1 and i != len(fragments) - 1:
-                    markup += "</br>"
+                    markup += "<br/>"
             if self.ents is None or label.upper() in self.ents:
                 color = self.colors.get(label.upper(), self.default_color)
                 ent_settings = {
@@ -585,7 +585,7 @@ class EntityRenderer:
         for i, fragment in enumerate(fragments):
             markup += escape_html(fragment)
             if len(fragments) > 1 and i != len(fragments) - 1:
-                markup += "</br>"
+                markup += "<br/>"
         markup = TPL_ENTS.format(content=markup, dir=self.direction)
         if title:
             markup = TPL_TITLE.format(title=title) + markup
diff --git a/spacy/tests/test_displacy.py b/spacy/tests/test_displacy.py
index e9b5a9aba..d2d5230c4 100644
--- a/spacy/tests/test_displacy.py
+++ b/spacy/tests/test_displacy.py
@@ -113,7 +113,7 @@ def test_issue5838():
     doc = nlp(sample_text)
     doc.ents = [Span(doc, 7, 8, label="test")]
     html = displacy.render(doc, style="ent")
-    found = html.count("</br>")
+    found = html.count("<br/>")
     assert found == 4