Is there a way to post in a conventional manner - such that I don't have to add line breaks

What do you deem is a conventional manner? TIMTOWTDI, from various wiki markup formats over javascript based tag inserting to plain text. In either way the text has to be marked somehow. Here at perlmonks the conventin is just HTML, see Perl Monks Approved HTML tags.

Your Carpal tunnel syndrome certainly doesn't come from perlmonks. Get a better keyboard ;-) The markup needed here for a decent post is very little. I rarely use line breaks, mostly <blockquote>, <code>, <c>, <i> and rarely <b> tags. If you're using vim - here's the relevant block in my .vimrc which does the formatting whilst typing with Alt key bindings and abbreviations:

" all those ^[ and ^M created with <Ctrl>V<Key>, [ being Esc, M Ret
" insert blockquote block
ab <B <blockquote>^M^M</blockquote>^[ki
" insert code block
" (reverse the edoc, it's like that to not break the formatting :-)
ab <C <code>^M^M</edoc>^[ki
" Alt-i: wrap the current word with <i></i> whilst typing
"  leaving the cursor at the closing tag in insert mode
map! ^[i ^[bi<i>^[ea</i>^[2bi
" Alt-c: wrap the current word with <c></c> whilst typing
"  leaving the cursor at the closing tag in insert mode
map! ^[c ^[bi<c>^[ea</c>^[2bi
" Alt-l: wrap the current number with [id://<number>] whilst typing
"  leaving the cursor aftert the closing ] in insert mode
map! ^[l ^[bi[id://^[ea]
[download]

Some emacs, anybody? :-)

--shmem

update: looked up carpel tunnel syndrome .)

_($_=" "x(1<<5)."?\n".q·/)Oo.  G°\        /
                              /\_¯/(q    /
----------------------------  \__(m.====·.(_("always off the crowd"))."·
");sub _{s./.($e="'Itrs `mnsgdq Gdbj O`qkdq")=~y/"-y/#-z/;$e.e && print}