How can I insert a line break (<br>) in Markdown?

General Discussions
1

I’m creating a Markdown file with paragraphs that include a link and a line of text immediately after it.

When I add a new line after the link, it gets rendered as a separate <p> tag instead of staying in the same paragraph. I want the output to have the link and the next line of text in the same paragraph, separated by a line break.

How can I achieve this using a Markdown line break?

2

Hey! I’ve struggled with this before :sweat_smile:. In Markdown, a simple way to add a line break without creating a new paragraph is to put two spaces at the end of the line:

Here’s a link with some text.
This line will appear right below it in the same paragraph.

Those two spaces tell Markdown to render a <br> instead of a <p>.

Works reliably on GitHub, VS Code, and most Markdown renderers.

3

Using the explicit <br> tag

If you want something more obvious, you can just insert an HTML <br>:

Here’s a link with some text.<br> This line will appear immediately below it in the same paragraph.

Markdown supports inline HTML, so <br> works everywhere.

I usually use this when I want the break to be super explicit or when two spaces are easy to miss.

4

Combining multiple line breaks or spacing tricks

Sometimes I’m working on Markdown that gets converted to HTML differently (like Jekyll or Pandoc). A trick I often use:

Here’s a link with some text.
 
This line will appear below in the same paragraph.

  ensures the renderer doesn’t collapse whitespace, keeping the line visually separated.

Works when spacing-only tricks aren’t reliable in custom renderers.