Does DMARC TXT record require trailing semicolon?

Question

I've left off the trailing semicolon in each TXT record of my DMARC records, but I've never thought if this is ignoring some convention, or could cause lookups to fail somehow.

For example, is there any difference between:

"v=DMARC1; p=reject; rua=mailto:[email protected]"

and

"v=DMARC1; p=reject; rua=mailto:[email protected];"

Answer 1

Either is fine. The specification shows the dmarc-sep, which is defined as %x3b (';'), is optional for the trailing DMARC record segment.

Answer 2

It doesn't require a trailing semi-colon. I've inspected a lot of DMARC records and I never seen one with with trailing semi-colon. The trailing semi-colon might actually cause issues with validators.