Template:Blockquote paragraphs

Due to the utterly intractable MediaWiki bug reported at, and still unfixed , 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.

The intuitive choice:

""

results in the mangled:

Blank lines seem to work at first:

""

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

Yet this markup fails with wiki ":" citation:



Just trying to use or  markup won't solve all the problems:

""

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

Meanwhile this version seems OK at first:

""

but again can't be indented in citation:



, the solution for the problem is to use  with  or  elements (or others, like nested blockquotes and lists):



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

And it work with wikimarkup ":" citation, unlike the failed test cases hereinbefore:



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

""

or even:

""

which results in the expected:

They citable: