Oh, come on! This is 2004, who doesn't know about <p> and <br>? besides here is the first entry in Writeup Formatting Tips:

Carriage returns are stripped
All carriage returns are ignored in posts except within <CODE> sections. Use a <br> to get a line-break and a <p> tag to get a paragraph break.

Maybe the entry about wrapping code in <code> tags could be moved up in the list, but still, I would expect anyone on this forum to be able to write a simple post.

In reply to Re: Re: Re: 'show as entered' option for poorly formatted posts. by mirod
in thread 'show as entered' option for poorly formatted posts. by EvdB

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
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  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.