Template:Blockquote paragraphs
Due to the utterly intractable MediaWiki bug reported at Template:Bugzilla, and still unfixed as of February 2012[update], 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 <blockquote>.
The problem in action: test cases that seem like they should work but fail
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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
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: |
As of February 2012[update], the only solution for the problem is to use unbroken markup with <p>...</p> or <br /> elements (or others, like nested blockquotes and lists):
{{bq|Line 1 <br/>Line 2 <br/>Line 3 <br/>Line 4.}}
which, while hard to read, especially for long content, results in the expected:
And it does work with wikimarkup ":" citation, unlike the failed test cases hereinbefore:
Happily, there is a HTML comment workaround for readability that lets you do whatever you want:
{{bq|1=<!--
-->Line 1 <br/><!--
-->Line 2 <br/><!--
-->Line 3 <br/><!--
-->Line 4.}}
or even:
{{bq|1=<!--
-->Line 1 <br/><!--
-->Line 2 <br/><!--
-->Line 3 <br/><!--
-->Line 4.}}
which results in the expected:
They are citable:
