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Spoiler quotes might be messed up. They break when multiple lines of spoiler are involved. This is inconvenient on sites like Scifi, where spoilery plot details might be discussed, or Puzzling, where some members are picking up a convention of spoilering their answers.

I'm assuming they're intended to work with multiple lines, since regular quotes do and the editing help says nothing either way.

This is what spoiler syntax looks like when it's working just fine:

>! See here

It shows up as:

See here

Now to the bugs.

Multiple lines, blank line in between

>! This line is visible, it's just a quote

>! So is the exclamation mark

! This line is visible, it's just a quote

! So is the exclamation mark

Multiple lines, no blank line

>! In quote markup, you can put >'s in the blank lines.
>!
>! When you do that in spoiler quotes, the entire thing becomes one line.

In quote markup, you can put >'s in the blank lines. When you do that in spoiler quotes, the entire thing becomes one line.

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  • 1
    This was edited to be a support request the day I posted it, I notice, but it's supposed to be a bug report. Apr 25, 2016 at 13:01
  • My version of this (first bug) was going to be titled "Blank lines spoil spoilers." An attractive title might help it get a bit more attention.
    – WBT
    Jun 14, 2016 at 0:47

1 Answer 1

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From the Markdown help page on linebreaks:

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

This works fine within spoilers as well. For example:

>! This line ends in two spaces:  
>!  
>! and so does that one ^

This line ends in two spaces:

and so does that one ^

You can also use <br> tags:

>! You can end the line with a tag:<br>
>! <br>
>! or just start the next line with one
>! <br>like so

You can end the line with a tag:

or start the next line with one
like so

And <p> tags:

>! You don't need one for the first line
>! <p>Hello.</p>
>! or for the last line.

You don't need one for the first line

Hello.

or for the last line.

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  • This is an OK workaround for visual purposes, though it leaves an entire multi-paragraph quote wrapped up in a single paragraph tag. That's bad for screen reader users, probably among other kinds of machine parsers. Nov 4, 2014 at 3:09
  • @doppelgreener It turns out paragraph tags work too. I'm still trying to work out how they're meant to be used though, since the HTML seems a bit messy.
    – grc
    Nov 4, 2014 at 3:16
  • Curiously, paragraph tags work fine in the post preview, but not in the suggested edit queue. Look at the first word being on its own line! Still seems like a good workaround for now though. Nov 4, 2014 at 8:46
  • The two spaces thing is pretty strange, and when you select multiple lines and click the quote tool it doesn't follow the two spaces convention, so brings it all to one line. Note sure why it would ignore something as explicit as a newline starting with > Not a critic of your answer, but more of a gripe with the behavior of the markdown.
    – AaronLS
    May 7, 2015 at 22:39
  • This is a workaround for the last part of the bug report only. I was about to post a bug report that omitted this part entirely, which would be a dupe of the rest of this question, and which isn't addressed by this partial answer. That's not to criticize or say this answer isn't helpful, just to restate that this question is still looking for a substantive answer on the main issue of unexpected behavior when a blank line is inserted between spoiler-tagged lines.
    – WBT
    Jun 14, 2016 at 0:41

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