Editing Encyclopedia:Line breaks usage (section)

== Use single line breaks ==

Use frequent manually entered hard line breaks within paragraphs when editing the source code of articles,
at least at the end of every sentence, but also in other places as needed.
Manually entered hard line breaks arguably make the article much easier to ''edit'' when the lines
of input text are short.
(The "source code", "wiki text", or "input text" is what editors see and change in the text box of the "edit this page" form;
the displayed text is what is shown to the reader.)

One benefit is that the line breaks make [[diff]]s smaller and (arguably) easier to read,
and this was especially true before the [[Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2012-04-23/Technology_report#MediaWiki_releases_edge_forward|changes to the styling of diffs made in 2012]].
In addition, if there is a line break at least at the end of every sentence,
editors can easily locate, rearrange, or modify sentences within a long paragraph.
Since writers often think in terms of sentences, it makes sense to organize the text that way.
This section of the article, for instance, is broken into multiple lines, largely at clause boundaries.

The article on [[Steaming]] is one good example on how the ''diff'' algorithm fails miserably. 
The "very minor" changes dated ''03:48, January 19, 2006'', by user ''64.69.92.30'' in the revision history[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Steaming&diff=35803807&oldid=33240110], 
show how the minor changes failed to show up as what they actually are because the minor changes to consecutive paragraphs throw ''diff'' totally off base.
It would have avoided such a big mess if the paragraphs were broken into one line per sentence,
as ''diff'' would have found consecutive identical sentences.

Finally, a rebuttal of many of the above points:

* MediaWiki software does not allow line breaks in the middle of a paragraph indented with ":", but paragraphs that should be indented are generally shorter than other paragraphs.
* MediaWiki software does not allow line breaks in the middle of a list item, but items in a bulleted list (using "*") or numbered list (using "#") are generally shorter than paragraphs. In fact, it is easier to convert the individual sentences of a properly line-broken paragraph to list items or [[Template:Prose|vice versa]].
* MediaWiki software does not allow line breaks in the middle of a link, but linked phrases generally do not start in one [[clause]] and end in another.
* Many editors insert line breaks into the source code only where there is a logical, semantic break. Consider this example:
*:The consequences of this Amendment to American society have been profound.<br>First Amendment questions have been raised with regard to<br>the separation of church and state;<br>civil rights issues;<br>pornography and obscenity;<br>political speech and organizations;<br>journalism and its restrictions;<br>involuntary commitment laws;<br>and many more.
* Text is no longer wrapped only at the window edge of the text entry area, but where the author chose to make the linebreak. Thus, there will be a lot of whitespace within a paragraph, which reinforces the semantic breaks.
* The appearance of the article source text has always been different from the appearance of the rendered output. For example, <code><nowiki>[[line break]]</nowiki></code> contains brackets, but it is rendered as [[line break]], which does not.