# 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:** 6

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**Author:** ![Rhababo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/5fc32e/32.png) [@Rhababo](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Rhababo)\
**Post date:** [September 20, 2023, 3:12am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-does-markdown-do-this-whitespace-trimming-and-other-features/279437/6 "2023-09-20T03:12:31Z")

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> [@Canapin](#):
>
> I think Discourse wants to keep posts clean and easy to read.  
> By removing extra line breaks and trimming spaces at the beginning of lines, it ensures posts look consistent.

> [@Canapin](#):
>
> but my guess is that it’s to keep numbered lists as simple as possible

I really appreciate the insight. My community has a large forum game/storytelling sub-community where freedom in formatting tends to be worth more than consistency. If the core reason for these features is really to help maintain a consistent and simplified look, it is probably safe to ax them for my use case, or to at least give them a user selectable toggle.

> [@simon](#):
>
> It might be worth looking at this page and trying its 10 minute markdown tutorial: [Markdown Reference](https://commonmark.org/help/).

This is a very helpful tutorial, and its emphasis on “making beautiful text” does seem to follow the ideas of consistency mentioned earlier. Thanks for pointing it out.

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