force a WordPress line break

Here is  how to force a line break in WordPress.  An easy solution too!

<br clear=”none” />

Switch to the HTML editor and place this snippet at the end of the line. Validated code? I don’t know. It just works.

When I first shuddered at <?php echo get_settings(‘home’), I wholeheartedly agreed, because there’s much involved to install and adopt a premier community platform, but I wouldn’t have expected WordPress to be abandoning the carriage return. I was up all night trying plugins and raw PHP and HTML code snippets or switching off the TinyMCE Visual editor. Fail. The wpautop filter simply will not allow conventional <BR /> and <P> tags.

Here’s a css stylesheet solution:

p{
padding-bottom:7px;
}

Why? A padding of 7 pixels is average line height of a carriage return. Adjust accordingly.

And for special fun:

<p align=”left”> </p>

Pay attention now.  This is NOT your mother’s alignment. Do you see the space?  When wrapped in <code> tags using the WordPress HTML editor, wpautop sees %20, a blank line of one character, ASCII 255, the beloved transparent GIF, a preserved space. One is enough to fill a line.

Wpautop is a rat under the floor. Switching from the HTML editor to Visual might strip inserted code, sometimes and sometimes not.