It’s certainly true that < br > is malformed, and actually shouldn’t be recognised by any engine that purports to support any particular HTML standard.

On the other hand, the engine quite definitely ignores HTML standards in at least one respect*, in that the HTML standards require that all "white-space" characters (which include both spaces and carriage returns) should be collapsed into a single space and otherwise ignored. Unless the engine has changed drastically (and it doesn’t appear to have changed all that much) it shouldn’t be necessary to use <br /> tags at all, unless one wants to ensure that one’s story is readily publishable as an ‘e-book’ at some later date. (This isn’t a bad idea, and might well save quite a lot of tedious editing later on.)

Just a thought...

Jabberwocky

by Lewis Carroll

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
    Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
    And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
    The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
    The frumious Bandersnatch!”

He took his vorpal sword in hand;
    Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree
    And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
    The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
    And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
    The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
    He went galumphing back.

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
    Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
    He chortled in his joy.

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
    Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
    And the mome raths outgrabe.

You’ll note, I’m sure, that the ‘engine’ currently inserts a bit of extra space between lines in certain circumstances – technically, called ‘leading,’ which helps with one formatting problem whilst causing minor problems with text that ought to be left alone, like a formatted poem. Once one starts tweaking standards, irritating behaviour happens. Fine typography requires more precision than mere publishing tools. Everything is a compromise. I dare say many site authors would feel rather hard done by if they were required to submit perfectly accurate HTML encoding when they’d much rather concentrate on telling their story.

The problem is that the people who wrote what Drupal calls "the filter engine" decided that the little engine that could, could detect excess blank lines and remove them. Because artificial intelligence! Not the engine, the programmers.

Anyway, the only way to fix it is to replace the filter engine and we don't rewrite major parts of the basic software as a matter of principle called, "When the heck would we have the time?"

We keep checking to see if someone else with more resources has rewritten the filter engine to behave more as if people posting things knew what they were doing.

Two major revs ago, back when the site was less busy, I did rewrite part of the filter engine and it caused endless headaches whenever the site was updated.

As for formatting in BC, I format in an offline program, after having figured out which formatting works. Then I copy and paste. Doing major formatting IN BC is asking for a connection failure that wipes out your work.

Hugs,
Erin