Markdown intentionally ignores single returns: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax#p
The implication of the “one or more consecutive lines of text” rule is that Markdown supports “hard-wrapped” text paragraphs. This differs significantly from most other text-to-HTML formatters (including Movable Type’s “Convert Line Breaks” option) which translate every line break character in a paragraph into a
tag.When you do want to insert a
break tag using Markdown, you end a line with two or more spaces, then type return.
So, add two spaces at the end of a line, then hit return and it will be parsed as a
(line break).