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Line breaks & new lines in Markdown

Pressing Enter once usually does not create a visible new line in Markdown. There are three ways to control line breaks, depending on whether you want a new paragraph or just a new line.

New paragraph — leave a blank line

The most common case: separate blocks of text with one empty line.

First paragraph.

Second paragraph (a blank line between them).

Hard line break — two trailing spaces

To break a line within the same paragraph, end the line with two spaces, then press Enter. (The two trailing spaces are invisible — that's why single Enters often seem ignored.)

Line one with two trailing spaces
Line two — same paragraph, new line.

Hard line break — a backslash

Many Markdown flavors (including GitHub) also accept a trailing \ backslash, which is easier to see than trailing spaces.

Line one with a backslash\
Line two.

Good to know

• A raw <br> HTML tag also works in most renderers if you prefer it.
• Trailing-space breaks are easy to lose to editors that trim whitespace — the backslash is more robust.

Related: cheat sheet · live editor.