Template:Blockquote paragraphs

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Due to the utterly intractable MediaWiki bug reported at Template:Bugzilla, and still unfixed Template:As of, block quoting on Wikipedia, with or without a template, cannot handle freeform linebreaking for paragraphs and poems and the like, unless formatted one very specific (and annoying) way. It's not a problem of blockquote templates, but all uses of <blockquote>.

The intuitive choice:

{{bq|Line 1


Line 2
Line 3

Line 4}}

results in the mangled:

Blank lines seem to work at first:

{{bq|Line 1


Line 2

Line 3

Line 4}}

though with quite tall spacing between the content blocks (lines, in our test cases):

Yet this markup fails with wiki ":" indentation:

Template:Bq

Just trying to use <p>...</p> or <br /> markup won't solve all the problems:

{{bq|Line 1<br/>


Line 2<br/>
Line 3<br/>

Line 4}}

results in odd spacing, with the middle blocks too close together:

Meanwhile this version seems okay at first:

{{bq|<p>Line 1</p>


<p>Line 2</p>
<p>Line 3</p>

<p>Line 4</p>}}

but again can't be indented:

Template:Bq

Template:As of, the Template:Em solution for the problem is to use Template:Em with <p>...</p> or <br /> elements (or others, like nested blockquotes and lists):

Template:Tnull

which, while hard to read, especially for long content, results in the expected:

And it Template:Em work with wikimarkup ":" indentation, unlike the failed test cases above:

Template:Bq

Happily, there is an HTML-comment workaround for readability that lets you do whatever you want:

{{bq|1=<!--


-->Line 1<br/><!--
-->Line 2<br/><!--
-->Line 3<br/><!--
-->Line 4.}}

or even:

{{bq|1=<!--


-->Line 1<br/><!--

-->Line 2<br/><!--

-->Line 3<br/><!--

-->Line 4.}}

which results in the expected:

They Template:Em indentable:

Template:Bq

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