 | This is an essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
If you add two line breaks (by pressing return twice) to the source text, Wikipedia will create a new paragraph. It is uncontroversial that paragraphs should be used to make articles easy to read. This page, however, refers to single line breaks within article source texts.
Single line breaks in the source text are not translated to single line breaks in the output (if you want a single line break to appear in the rendered article, use a <br /> tag or {{Break}} template). However, single line breaks in the source do have certain effects: Within a list, a single line break starts either the next item or a new paragraph; within an indentation (which, if marked up with leading colons, is really the definition part of a definition list), a single line break aborts the indentation and starts a new paragraph. Links do not span line breaks (this is intentional, so that authors do not accidentally turn an entire paragraph into a link etc.).
Regardless, some Wikipedians insert single line breaks into the source text of articles for various reasons; others oppose this practice. Readers do not need to care about this controversy since it does not affect the appearance of articles. The two positions are presented below. See the discussion page for the current head count for each position.