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Re:Markdown is the Future of Writing by dchest on Friday September 13, 2013 @03:05AM (#6379088)
A single newline is possible, and it's the most horrible thing in Markdown:

   When you do want to insert a <br /> break tag using Markdown,
   you end a line with two or more spaces, then type return.
http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax#p
Re:Markdown is the Future of Writing by koralatov on Friday September 13, 2013 @03:26AM (#6379141)
Agreed. It's an appalling kludge, and I bet most of these ``distraction-free writing environments'' (vomit) don't highlight the extra trailing spaces in any way.

I have the following in my .vimrc which at least makes them visible:

  set listchars=tab:»\ ,eol:¬,trail:·
Of course, having them visible doesn't change the fact that they're an appalling kludge and I still tend to use <br /> instead.