You know that thing where you’re writing markdown and you hit “Enter” twice to make a new paragraph? Thanks, Google Docs and Microsoft Word, for training us that double-enter is the only way to live.
Such as this...
...then you get this.Which gives you:
<p>Such as this...</p>
<p>...then you get this.</p>But sometimes you don’t want a whole paragraph break. You just want a single line break, like when you’d use <br /> in HTML (because apparently we can’t escape HTML even when we’re trying to escape HTML):
<p>
Such as this... <br />
...then you get this.
</p>Sure, you could just throw a <br />tag right into your markdown. It works fine! But if you want to keep things clean and HTML-free (like some kind of purist who thinks they’re better than the rest of us), here’s a neat trick: add a backslash \ at the end of your line.
Such as this...\
...then you get this.Pretty simple, right?
One heads up though - not every markdown processor supports this. I’d definitely test it out with whatever you’re using before you ship anything. Some processors also let you add two spaces at the end of a line (literally just hit spacebar twice), but since most code editors auto-trim whitespace, I stick with the backslash method. It’s like choosing between a driver and a 9-iron - both might get you there, but one’s way more reliable.
That’s it! Nothing revolutionary, just a handy little thing that makes markdown a bit more flexible when you need it.