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The help page says:

End a line with two spaces to add a <br/> linebreak

But I did that in my comment here and I do not see any sort of break.

What's going wrong?

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Now I'll try another line break here. I like pie. I like pie. No, it definitely didn't work. – MJD Mar 24 '12 at 19:56
Test: $$\text{I like } \pi$$ $$\text{I like } \pi$$. As a workaround (which uses the math capabilities) you can put your comment in $$: like $$\text{I like pie}$$ – Aryabhata Mar 24 '12 at 20:24
@Aryabhata I do not understand your suggestion. Surely you are not suggesting that I make my entire comment into a math display? – MJD Mar 24 '12 at 20:28
It is not just meant for you, it is for anyone who comes across this issue and comes across this question. It might work for some. It might not work for you. Hence it is a comment, not an answer. You are free to not use it if it does not suit your purpose. Besides, there are probably multiple ways of getting multi line text using tex. This is just one of the ways... – Aryabhata Mar 24 '12 at 20:29
I tried using $$\quad$$ to make a space but $$\quad$$ it looks pretty bad. – MJD Mar 24 '12 at 21:30
Okay, I just tried several things and none of them worked. It may be a left-over from when they changed to "enter submits the comments". – Arturo Magidin Mar 24 '12 at 21:48
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@Mark: Is there a real need for a line break in your comment? – Arturo Magidin Mar 24 '12 at 22:01
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did you mean to have a link to the help page you were looking at? Specifically, this is the "comment" section of the editing help page. Note that "Comments support only bold, italic, code and links". In particular, linebreaks are not supported in comments. – Willie Wong♦ Mar 26 '12 at 8:23

1 Answer

up vote 6 down vote accepted

Line breaks and many other stuff are not supported in comments. The basic design rationale is (as described by SE) that comments should be short and sweet: if you need to start a new paragraph, either you are really writing an answer (and so should be posting as such) or you are being too verbose in the comments.

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Very good, thanks. I wish the documentation had made this clearer. Clicking the "help" button while adding a comment pops up a yellow box that documents the stuff that works, but also has a "Learn more" link that points to meta.math.stackexchange.com/editing-help#comment-formatting . That page is in two sections, one for comments, and one not, but the distinction wasn't clear until I knew the answer. I think a couple of <h3> elements would have prevented my confusion. – MJD Mar 26 '12 at 13:31

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