Essays Low‑impact

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Supporters of the rule "Don't use (single, manually entered) line breaks" include:

• Justfred - "Don't put in arbitrary line breaks where they don't belong."
• Rotem Dan (very strongly, I think the markup text should look as close as possible to the text displayed, this eases on finding a specific point in the text by looking at the rendred paragraphs.)
• Eloquence, [use line breaks] makes no sense (see below)
• Martin (after swinging back and forth, I think I'm generally against this now)
• Tannin Extra line breaks make editing painful.
• Zoe (also very strongly.)
• Hephaestos [single, manually entered line breaks] leave minor changes floating completely out of context with the rest of the material.
• Patrick Changing text into list elements or indenting it becomes cumbersome, the line breaks have to be removed.
• John Owens hates cleaning up when a line break ends up in the middle of a would-be wikilink. (But I'll usually leave them be if they're at least at ends of sentences instead of every 80 characters or less.)
• Camembert (if line breaks are added, the result is awful to read in the edit window, makes some editing trickier, and if anything makes the diff function less useful, not more, because diffs are shown out of context, making them harder to find in the article)
• Oliver P. (Yes, what he said. And what Martin said below. I can't come up with anything original, sorry.)
• bdesham -- yes, what Camembert said. I'd like to add that I find this really, really, really, really annoying.
• ABCD – what bdesham said
• Vsmith Never used 'em or gave this a thought 'til someone griped at me. Seems a holdover from archaic pre-hrml time? Plus I agree with all those above.
• Bcat (talk | email) 17:22, 17 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• EldKatt (Talk) I don't think small diff pages (the only major argument I can see) is worth the price of out-of-context diff pages and a generally hard-to-read source. A paragraph is a paragraph, and I like my paragraphs looking like paragraphs. The idea of having all sentences aligned makes particularly little sense to me.
• Ben Arnold I've never seen anyone do this random-line-breaks-in-a-paragraph thing, but I'm sure it would be tidied up by the next editor if they did. Seems really weird and difficult to use/read.
• ElAmericano Per everybody.
• This sounds nice in theory but is impractical in long articles. More importantly, it's highly dangerous to rely on peculiar software features. Xiner (talk, email) 01:01, 3 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• DRAGON Elemental (EXACTLY what Camembert said. It makes editing harder, and breaks context diffs - so it's a no-brainer!) —Preceding undated comment added 11:50, 5 April 2011 (UTC).

• 5CR1PT (talk) And I would also argue that it makes Wikipedia more future-proof and (a tiny bit more) format-agnostic for cross uses via solutions like Pandoc. And one never knows, maybe one day Mediawiki parser will be moved to the more user-friendly Markdown markup language? :)

Supporters of the rule "Use (single, manually entered) line breaks" include:

• tbc
• Damian Yerrick
• LDC
• Bryan Derksen
• Eclecticology
• Kowloonese (strongly; it is silly to spend timing doing what the browser does for you, i.e. the formatting. So my main concern left is the quality of the "diff" result.)
  • "it is silly to spend timing doing what the browser does for you" sounds like an argument against this rule, not for it --Camembert
    • The browser does the HTML layout for you. It doesn't do the wikitext diffs for you. This argument is about the wikitext, not the result after converting to HTML and normalizing whitespace per HTML rules. --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 03:16, 3 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Rossami (I recognize the potential format problems, but judicious use of linebreaks can make downloading the diff pages much faster. I routinely work on dial-up and this is a big problem for me.)
• zeno (there is no problem at all for using line breaks in normal paragraphs, e.g. after the end of a sentence - of course I could be convinced of the "Don't use" rule - atm I am just not convinced)
• Error -- I use a line per sentence when adding text. Not in :, or * (like here). But people like to group them back when I'm not looking.
• Nyenyec - I'm color blind and for me no line breaks make it extremely hard to find the changed sections in a large paragraph. Therefore I use a line per sentence when I write.
• User:EdwardOConnor
• Martin Geisler I consider the lack of support for linebreaks in lists a serious defect in the Mediawiki parser --- the long lines makes the text harder to read. (PhpWiki has had support for this in a long time.)
• DavidCary 20:25, 29 November 2005 (UTC) : I also use a line per sentence when adding text, like User:Error. See below.[reply]
• rossb (talk) : it makes the diffs so much easier to check.
• Dave3457 Line breaks help the reader absorb the information. Sometimes a new paragraph is not appropriate but you still want to communicate that the present sentence is a new line of thought. If the diff software doesn't deal with them then why not get it to? That being said they should not be over done. Also they should always be at the end of a sentence and the next sentence should start on a new line in the edit window. —Preceding undated comment added 08:15, 17 February 2010 (UTC).
• jeh (talk · contribs) I agree with most of the people in this section. Line breaks not only make the diffs easier to check and less likely to be "confused," they also reduce clutter in the edit window. Jeh (talk) 00:28, 13 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
• Aymatth2 (talk) 14:15, 5 November 2013 (UTC) Three reasons:[reply]
  • When I start an article I often rearrange text until I am satisfied with the sequence. My mouse coordination is not great. If each sentence is on a line or lines by itself I find it easier to select a sentence, then cut it and paste it somewhere else.
  • I prefer not to overcite. Two or three sentences may have a cite like ((sfn|Smith|2003|p=136)) at the end of the last. Before moving one of these sentences somewhere else, I have to copy the cite to the end of it too, which is easier with line breaks at the end of each sentence.
  • Diffs are easier to understand
• Batternut: Judicious sentence-ending line breaks eases dealing with big paragraphs - diffs are better and editing is easier. The arguments against such usage are very weak: indenting a paragraph - almost never necessary; convert to list item - bad style, rarely useful; whitespace in the text entry area a waste of space and distracting - not with judicious sentence-ending line breaks; appearance of the source differs from rendered - it's wildly different anyway; may confuse new editors - just weasel words!
• 7dare (talk) 10:49, 29 January 2019 (UTC): Strongly, they allow for a certain point in the source to be found much more easily if each line in the source begins at the beginning of a sentence. It avoids making the source into an intimidating monolithic block.[reply]
• Ita140188 (talk) Source code is much clearer, especially when there are references at the end of each sentence. Diffs are also clearer --Ita140188 (talk) 18:58, 19 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Sirjohnperrot: A straightforward means of improving readability and typographical appearance when used appropriately for sentence ending.Sirjohnperrot (talk) 19:53, 18 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
• Sangdeboeuf: Makes parsing changes in diffs easier, since each sentence (or clause) in the old version is matched with the corresponding sentence in the new version. Especially helpful when paragraphs are very long and/or contain many references, since users will not have to scroll past huge blocks of unrelated wiki-markup. Especially especially helpful when paragraphs are long and diffs are minor and hard to spot, such as changing punctuation marks. Per WP:CREEP, it should be up to users' discretion whether or not to use. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 04:29, 8 July 2021 (UTC) edited 08:30, 2 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Supporters of neither rule, both rules, agnostics, etc:

• doom I reluctantly agree that avoiding embedded linebreaks in paragraphs is probably the right way to do it with the wikipedia software, it would be better if the software did not impose the need to be finicky about details like this.

Now, I agree fully with this guideline and all (even though I keep forgetting to practice it :), but I do have one possible objection/question; isn't a soft line break one of those line breaks inserted automatically by word wrapping and a hard line break one of those line breaks inserted by hitting the enter/return key? If that's indeed the case, we want to use hard line breaks and not soft line breaks. If it isn't the case, then never mind. Bryan Derksen

Maybe the word "soft" should be removed from the rule; many people (myself included) may not have a clear view of the difference between soft and hard breaks. This is really about nice formatting in general. One principle in that would be to avoid excessively long paragraphs; if that's done the "diff"'s will fall into place. Eclecticology

(Justfred) Force users to edit their text in a specific way because the diff function doesn't support sentances, only paragraphs? And use the fact that the formatter ignores single soft line breaks? This seems wrong to me. A paragraph is a paragraph. Don't put in arbitrary line breaks where they don't belong. For that matter, I'd like it if the formatter understood single-linebreak-separated lists without needing br tags. I'd prefer if it were as close to WYSIWYG as possible. --justfred

I guess this is just a recommendation. The user can write any way they want to if they don't care about the extra burden on the systems and other users. It is a courtesy not a mandate. The diff function needs to work harder and slow down the server if it needs to process a long paragraph versus a short sentence. Other users can read the diff report easier if the context is narrowed down to just one sentence. The download time of the diff page is faster if the diff blocks are smaller by eliminating all the unchanged sentences around the changes. Yes, I agree that if the diff function is smart enough, we can do away with this workaround. But given the situation, this is a good compromise. -- 63.192.137.21

This policy is perhaps obsolete now Wikipedia has spiffy side-by-side diff output. -- Tarquin 12:47 Jul 30, 2002 (PDT)

What it all comes down to is "write short paragraphs for ease of online reading", but that sound point is pretty well hidden in all the verbiage, ironically. Ortolan88

No, that wasn't the intent of the rule at all. What we wanted to encourage is frequent hard breaks in the source text (that is, the text in the edit box), which make no difference at all in how the article is displayed, but make it easier to edit in many ways: First, some editors (particularly in the Unix world) don't handle long lines well. It makes diffs faster and smaller and easier to read, even with the new features. And it makes it easier to find sentences within a paragraph, and to rearrange sentences. --LDC

It makes editing extremely tedious and the text becomes difficult to read unless your edit box width happens to be set to the same size as the person who edited the text before you. Often when the text is edited, the extra bits are added without adjusting the lengths of the rest of the lines. This leads to some lines being much longer than other, and this is really difficult to read. It's only a problem for editors, but that is important enough to me. Don't you think? Of course you could ask everyone when adding a few words to re-edit the entire paragraph so as to maintain the arbitrary maximum line size typically of 80 chars. But this is tedious. Note that while a few editors don't deal well with long lines all editors deal badly with this kind of short line as used here: it ends up taking a whole bunch of extra space and you end up with a bunch of wasted white space on the right hand side. This happens to me with LDC's edit above - and wasted space is bad UI design. That's why we should write like, well, normal people. This is one of those instances where just because you can do something, doesn't mean that you should. Martin 00:27 5 Jun 2003 (UTC)

As an example - the above response is mis-indented (it should be at a single level of indentation, as a reply to LDC. However, fixing this is hideously tedious, and it's the single manual line-breaks that make it so. I could solve the problem by indenting LDC's comment instead.... but that's got the same problem. Remind me again how manual line breaks make pages easier to edit? Martin

I have also found several instances in articles where a line break is put in the middle of an internal link; this breaks the link. - Hephaestos|§ 18:58, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I also use a line per sentence when adding text, like User:Error. But I avoid adding line breaks in the middle of a sentence. My best excuse is that it helps me edit for improved readability -- it makes long sentences (which always hurt readability) stick out like a sore thumb. Also it helps me entirely avoid the Full_stop#Spacing_after_full_stop controversy. Probably the real reason I do it is a relic habit from old wiki software whose "diff" made it difficult to find minor changes in a long paragraph. But what irks me is people who clutter up Recent Changes, making no change other than adding or deleting these invisible-to-the-reader linebreaks (or other whitespace). --DavidCary 20:25, 29 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

This makes it easier to follow the Wikipedia:Guide_to_writing_better_articles#Use_short_sentences_and_lists guideline. --DavidCary 08:01, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This ballot is problemetic. I support one line per sentence but I am against random line breaks in the middle of a sentence or paragraph. My vote does not fit anywhere precisely, so I voted for use line breaks. I bet many who voted may have to face similar dilema. IMO, this voting result is not representative of what people really think. Kowloonese 20:03, 2 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This page seems to cover the subject in rambling and unnecessary detail. I propose replacing the page with a redirect to Wikipedia:How to edit a page. Please let me have your thoughts. jguk 11:34, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Would somebody care to make Wikipedia:Userboxes for these choices? --Error 03:17, 11 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I understand that the <br> tag is invalid XHTML, but it is converted to <br /> upon rendering by MediaWiki. So it's really an aesthetic difference, and in my opinion, <br> looks much cleaner. (For example, m:Help:Editing#Most frequent wiki markup explained (permanent link) uses it in one of its wikitext examples.) Is there any consensus on Wikipedia as to which one is preferred? Thanks. —dto (talkcontribs) 06:40, 2 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Lol, do some reading will you. In XHTML you need to close tags which are supposed to be self-closed for the code to pass validation. Just like <p> isn't valid without a subsequent </p>, you need to write <img src="" />, <br /> etc. STUPID 213.112.137.148 13:16, 17 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

But dto's point is that MediaWiki converts the HTML 4 <br> to the XHTML <br /> when preparing the page for rendering. So it really doesn't matter what you enter, just as the difference between [[tag]]s and [[tag|tags]] does not matter. --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 16:21, 17 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Which should we use? <br> or <br />?

Let's examine this step by step:

1: Writing the XHTML code <br/> without a blank is even against the recommendations of the World Wide Web Consortium, instead it should be written as <br /> since then HTML parsers can understand it too. HTML parsers will simply regard <br /> as a "br" with an unknown parameter "/", while they will regard "br/" as an unknown tag name. So we should definitely not teach people to write <br/>, but possibly <br />.

2: The "HTML" codes we use here at Wikipedia are not XHTML markup nor are they HTML markup, instead they are "HTML wikimarkup", since MediaWiki processes them just like wikimarkup.

3: Wikipedia mainly uses wikimarkup. The reasons for that is simple: Most people that edit Wikipedia are people who never have made a web page, so they know nothing about HTML, XHTML or CSS. So for them (and even for us old webmaster geeks) it is easier to use wikimarkup.

4: So far I have seen the documentation for MediaWiki talks about "HTML in wikitext" and never mentions "XHTML in wikitext". Also up until recently all documentation listed <br> as the code for forced line breaks. But some months ago some XHTML enthusiasts went around and edited a lot of the help pages to show the <br /> or even the <br/>.

So which should we use? <br> or <br />?

Well, let's first ask another question: Which markup should we use for bold text?

• '''Bold'''
• <b>Bold</b>
• <span style="font-weight:bold;">Bold</span>

I think we all know that the wikimarkup '''Bold''' is the recommended one. Mainly because it is simpler to use, especially for the majority of editors that don't know HTML and CSS.

The same goes for <br> vs <br />. The HTML wikimarkup <br> is easier for the majority of editors to use, and it is shorter.

Sure, we have a "teaching opportunity" to teach people to use the <br />, but there is a very high risk that they instead will use the <br/> and that would be a bad thing. And believe it or not, many beginners have problems telling "/" and "\" apart. So they might even try to use the <br\>...

So again, the <br> is easier for the majority of editors to use, and it is shorter.

--David Göthberg (talk) 23:19, 14 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Please note that this page has been nominated to be consolidated with the primary Manual of Style page. Please join the discussion at the MOS talk page in order to discus the possibility of merging this page with the MOS. Thank you.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 14:08, 27 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There is currently an ongoing discussion about the future of this and others MoS naming style. Please consider the issues raised in the discussion and vote if you wish GnevinAWB (talk) 20:52, 25 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Don't use line breaks → Wikipedia:Manual of Style (line breaks) — Consolidating naming per Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style#Poll Gnevin (talk) 16:24, 24 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose: This appears not to be a style guideline, but rather a page consisting of two opposing essays.—DCGeist (talk) 22:31, 25 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Remove from the MOS? Gnevin (talk) 12:32, 26 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've marked as essay, no serious edits in over 2 years Gnevin (talk) 13:53, 26 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think it is worth mentioning something about the mw:Visual editor, because it will likely make it largely unnecessary to use the wiki code. So, there would be less reason to worry about it. Helder 12:28, 4 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Please see Help talk:Line-break handling#Let us ignore syntax highlighters that do not accept <br>

It is a detailed discussion with participation from editors, developers, admins, etc.. Most people in that thread want <br> used, not <br />. See also: KISS principle.

See also MOS:SIMPLIFY: "Other things being equal, keep markup simple. This makes wikitext easier to understand and edit, and the results seen by the reader more predictable. Use HTML and CSS markup sparingly." --Timeshifter (talk) 08:41, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]