How do you write multiple spaces in text?

Question

When I try to add multiple spaces in a quote or text, it just appears as one space. For example, I want formatted output from a program on the question, like this:

2 3 5 7 11 13 17 19 23 29

Which should have been:

2**3**5**7**11*13*17*19*23*29

(With the * being the spaces)

The numbers are not formatted correctly. How do you solve this?

Answer 1

Note: You can click this edit link to see the source code of this answer (if you have enough rep).

To create space-honouring text in Markdown you have a number of options.... There are recommended ways, and other supported ways.

You can have <pre>this has 6 spaces</pre> (supported, but not recommended) forces a new paragraph (even if the <pre>...</pre> is embedded within the text sentence/paragraph), and looks like:

this      has 6 spaces

even when embedded.

Alternatively (recommended), if you want to include the formatted text in a paragraph, you can use the 'backtick' quote (`) (found to the left of the 1 key on US-keyboards) embedded in a paragraph.

Using <code>This is code</code> (supported, not recommended) also works and does not force a paragraph either, even .... when used in a paragraph like that. When you use the backtick it works even with spaces in the text and it can be embedded in a paragraph.

If you want a block of formatted text (Recommended) and even for the text to be syntax highlighted, and processed using markdown, you can indent blocks of text with 4 spaces...

public static final void main(String[] args) {
    // This is a formatted comment:
    //    i. using spaces to show
    //       that spaces are honoured...
    System.out.println("Hello World!");
}

The full help for Markdown is here: Editing Help, and it includes links for more details too. The sections are 'collapsed', so click the show more link in each section for... more.

Answer 2

You can use the HTML non-breaking space,   (or if you prefer hexadecimal,  ). The Wikipedia article says:

In certain formats (such as HTML), it also prevents the “collapsing” of multiple consecutive whitespace characters into a single space.

So for example, the markdown:

 1&nbsp;2&nbsp;3&nbsp;4<br>
 1&nbsp;&nbsp;2&nbsp;&nbsp;3&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;4

renders as:

1 2 3 4
1  2  3   4

But since everything outside a <code> or <pre> block is rendered with a proportional-width font, you may find alignment across multiple lines to be tricky; in that case, using <code> blocks is probably your best bet.

Answer 3

Because content is presented using HTML, and HTML condenses whitespace. Click the little question mark icon above the editing area on the right side to get formatting help.

In this particular case it looks like you want to mark a section of your question as preformatted text. The formatting help page has information on how to do that.