Paragraphs & Line Breaks

~10 min · markdown, paragraphs, whitespace

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The blank line is the paragraph separator

In Markdown, paragraphs are separated by one or more blank lines. Adjacent lines without a blank line between them are joined into the same paragraph — even if you typed them on different lines in the source.

This trips up everyone the first week. The visual line break in your editor does nothing. The blank line is what splits paragraphs.

Forcing a hard line break inside a paragraph

Three options, in order of preference:

Backslash at end of line (line one\ then line two) — explicit and visible in source.
Two trailing spaces + Enter — CommonMark standard, but invisible in most editors.
HTML <br> — fine, just less idiomatic.

Trailing-space pain: editors strip trailing whitespace by default. Many style guides ban the two-space trick because it silently disappears the moment someone runs prettier. Use the backslash or <br>.

Code

Paragraphs·markdown

This is one paragraph.

This is another paragraph.

These two lines
become one paragraph because there
is no blank line between them.

Hard line breaks·markdown

Roses are red\
Violets are blue

Or two trailing spaces (invisible):
Roses are red  
Violets are blue

Or HTML:<br>
Next line.

External links

CommonMark — Paragraphs

Exercise

Write a 3-paragraph blurb in Markdown. In paragraph two, force a hard line break using the backslash method. In paragraph three, accidentally write three lines with no blank lines between them — render and confirm they collapse into one paragraph. Burn this into muscle memory.

Progress

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