# Default line break handling is inconvenient **URL:** \ **Category:** Spec\ **Created:** [September 4, 2014, 11:26am UTC](https://talk.commonmark.org/t/default-line-break-handling-is-inconvenient/280 "2014-09-04T11:26:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 37
**Author:** ![codinghorror](https://cdn.commonmark.org/user_avatar/talk.commonmark.org/codinghorror/32/2_2.png) [@codinghorror](https://talk.commonmark.org/u/codinghorror)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2014, 9:02pm UTC](https://talk.commonmark.org/t/default-line-break-handling-is-inconvenient/280/37 "2014-09-09T21:02:52Z")
Guys, there is no “right” answer on this one. However **it is abundantly clear that original intent of Markdown was to wrap lines ala HTML** , e.g. ``` this text is written on two lines (renders as) this text is written on two lines ``` and CommonMark is designed to be as true as possible to the original philosophy of Markdown, only making necessary decisions in the many, many places where the spec was ambiguous. As noted by @riking earlier: > [@riking](#): > > The solution to this is actually mentioned in the spec. What you want is [§6.10, Soft Line Breaks](http://jgm.github.io/stmd/spec.html#soft-line-breaks) to be rendered as \ elements. It is an explicit goal to support a common “switch” that allows linebreaks to be treated as `
` since that is what users tend to expect. That’s how it works here too. 😄 The compromise we have in is that you can indicate linebreak with a backslash character now too e.g. ``` this text\ is written on two lines (renders as) this text is written on two lines ``` and at least you can now _see_ why, rather than having to somehow magically infer that there are two invisible spaces at the end of the line… --- _[View the full topic](https://talk.commonmark.org/t/default-line-break-handling-is-inconvenient/280)._