-8

I'm wondering if there are errors in the online documentation.

I looked at the online documentation for making comments. I've read the instant help.

I've followed the link in the command to another page.

https://meta.stackoverflow.com/editing-help#comment-formatting

How do I get this to work?

Linebreaks

End a line with two spaces to add a <br/> linebreak:

How do I love thee?  
 Let me count the ways

The only way I know to end a line is to press return. Pressing return posts the comment.

Is the documentation incorrect?

Improve this question
  • 4
    You can't do block quotes in comments or new lines (why would you?) – gunr2171 Nov 14 '13 at 3:09
  • 4
    The very first sentence of the comment formatting help (which you linked) reads "comments support only bold, italic, code and links [...]". Note that line breaks aren't in that list. – Mac Nov 14 '13 at 3:14
  • 9
    You don't get negative points for asking a question. You get negative points for not even reading the pages you quote and making the rest of us waste our time pointing out the content of said pages that you missed or didn't comprehend correctly. – Aaron Bertrand Nov 14 '13 at 3:16
5

It's not incorrect. You can't use line breaks in a comment.1 (Have you ever seen a comment with line breaks and paragraphs?) But it can be a little confusing if you're not paying attention.

The page highlights the section about formatting comments for you when you first open the link to that section, which doesn't include the section on line breaks. But once the highlight fades away, the rest of the page looks continuous, even though there's fine print at the end of the comment section separating it from the rest of the sections:

collapse | the above section is quoted for convenience from the full editing help, below.

And it doesn't help that that "below" links to the same individual section and not... the full editing help page. Neither does it help, I suspect, that the comment formatting section is so long that the highlight covers almost the entire browser window, even going below the fold.

1 If you press Shift+Return instead you'll see that you can insert a line break, but it won't have any effect once you submit the comment.

Improve this answer
  • 1
    +1 just go to the link meta.stackoverflow.com/editing-help and it may be more clear that "Linebreaks [sic]" and "Comment formatting" are two independent topics. – Aaron Bertrand Nov 14 '13 at 3:26
  • @Aaron Bertrand: Considering that the page seems to be trying not to let the user do that by not printing the correct links, I can see why OP would be confused. Something needs to be fixed on SE's end at least. – BoltClock's a Unicorn Nov 14 '13 at 3:27
  • 2
    While the page is not constructed entirely intuitively, given this rant-fest and my edit to this question, combined with the inability to search for duplicates (or ignore suggestions or related questions that surely appeared before posting), I'm not inclined to feel a whole lot of sympathy for this particular OP. – Aaron Bertrand Nov 14 '13 at 3:36
  • @Aaron Bertrand: OK, replace "OP" with "somebody reading that page" then. – BoltClock's a Unicorn Nov 14 '13 at 3:50
  • (Also, this OP was told three weeks ago that newlines are ignored in comments.) – Aaron Bertrand Nov 14 '13 at 4:42

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .