# Why does markdown do this? (whitespace trimming and other features)

**URL:** <https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-does-markdown-do-this-whitespace-trimming-and-other-features/279437>\
**Category:** Development\
**Tags:** markdown\
**Created:** [September 18, 2023, 8:34pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-does-markdown-do-this-whitespace-trimming-and-other-features/279437 "2023-09-18T20:34:06Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 4

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**Author:** ![simon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/simon/32/339122_2.png) [@simon](https://meta.discourse.org/u/simon)\
**Post date:** [September 19, 2023, 4:07pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-does-markdown-do-this-whitespace-trimming-and-other-features/279437/4 "2023-09-19T16:07:12Z")

</div>

> [@Rhababo](#):
>
> Removing consecutive line breaks without `</br>` or other code.

I’m not sure if this will solve a problem for you, but Discourse has a `traditional markdown linebreaks` site setting that is disabled by default. When enabled, two trailing spaces are required to create a line break.

Here’s an example with that setting enabled:

 ![image](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/4X/2/2/a/22a1d25873efd7f52685b956f62f3ce59ee799f7.png)

Here’s an example with the setting disabled (the default value of the setting):

 ![image](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/4X/3/f/e/3feccb80bec856892a8bbdc4939ccbb326a5380d.png)

> [@Rhababo](#):
>
> Discourse is my first exposure to markdown,

It might be worth looking at this page and trying its 10 minute markdown tutorial: [Markdown Reference](https://commonmark.org/help/). The Discourse new user tutorial links to that page, but it likely gets overlooked by a lot of users who take the tutorial:

 ![image](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/4X/3/c/4/3c41b0258fd482e3b87c7c6a9a75aaa1bf1a6676.png)

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