Help:Options for line breaks
When pasting in text into the wiki, it's typical for text to have just a single line break / paragraph break / return between lines.
Unfortunately, the wiki is a little different that what many people might expect. As it uses a markup language, it treats things differently. Single returns are displayed as a space. Double returns are displayed as a single return. Multiple spaces are collapsed into a single space. Sentences that start with spaces are interpreted as preformatted text, and can end up with a grey background.
Example:
Speech from Henry V
From this day to the ending of the world, But we in it shall be remember’d; We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he to-day that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother;
This can be dealt with in several ways.
Using the <pre> and </pre> comments to encapsulate the desired text:
Speech from Henry V From this day to the ending of the world, But we in it shall be remember’d; We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he to-day that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother;
Adding two returns at the end of every line (and removing leading spaces)
Speech from Henry V
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember’d;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother;
Adding <br> line break markup at the end of each line, and replacing leading spaces with the non-breaking white space HTML character -
Speech from Henry V
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember’d;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother;
Using some form of wiki markup that will respect single line breaks — indented lists, bullet lists, etc.
- Speech from Henry V
- From this day to the ending of the world,
- But we in it shall be remember’d;
- We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
- For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
- Shall be my brother;
See the Media Wiki help page on text formatting for options and ideas.