# Default line break handling is inconvenient

**URL:** <https://talk.commonmark.org/t/default-line-break-handling-is-inconvenient/280>\
**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:** 56

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jgm](https://cdn.commonmark.org/user_avatar/talk.commonmark.org/jgm/32/1360_2.png) [@jgm](https://talk.commonmark.org/u/jgm)\
**Post date:** [October 29, 2014, 6:08pm UTC](https://talk.commonmark.org/t/default-line-break-handling-is-inconvenient/280/56 "2014-10-29T18:08:45Z")

</div>

I think what is needed for lyrics and poetry is a special environment that preserves not only line breaks but initial indentation and interior spaces. reStructuredText has “line blocks” for this purpose (and for things like addresses), and I have adopted them in pandoc’s markdown. They look like this:

```
| The limerick packs laughs anatomical
| In space that is quite economical.
| But the good ones I've seen
| So seldom are clean
| And the clean ones so seldom are comical

| 200 Main St.

```

Since the cases where hard line breaks are typographically appropriate are relatively uncommon, special cases, there should be a special environment (like the above line blocks) that triggers them.

---

_[View the full topic](https://talk.commonmark.org/t/default-line-break-handling-is-inconvenient/280)._