How do I add line breaks in Markdown after increasing the font size of the first line?

Question

I am trying to format a Markdown blockquote in a Stack Overflow post where:

The first line is larger (like a header).
The following lines are normal size.
Each line is separated by single line breaks, not full paragraph spacing.

Desired appearance:

Initially I tried using an <h1> header tag on the first line and two spaces for line breaks. This rendered the first line correctly, but the two-space line breaks on the following lines were ignored.

> <h1>BIG CHART TITLE</h1>  
> small-font metric 1  
> small-font metric 2  
> small-font metric 3

BIG CHART TITLE
small-font metric 1 small-font metric 2 small-font metric 3

I tried several other methods, such as using <br> tags,

> <h1>BIG CHART TITLE</h1>
> small-font metric 1<br>
> small-font metric 2<br>
> small-font metric 3

using # for the header instead of <h1>,

> # BIG CHART TITLE
> small-font metric 1  
> small-font metric 2  
> small-font metric 3

and adding a blockquote marker below the header,

> <h1>BIG CHART TITLE</h1>
> 
> small-font metric 1  
> small-font metric 2  
> small-font metric 3

but each of these added a larger paragraph-like gap after the header instead of a single line break.

BIG CHART TITLE
small-font metric 1
small-font metric 2
small-font metric 3

I've had so much trouble reproducing the desired effect, I resorted to abusing non-breaking spaces in order to make the example screenshot earlier in this post.

How can I make a multi-line blockquote in Markdown where the first line is large, followed by normal sized lines, with small, single line-break spacing between each line? I am open to using in-line HTML tags mixed with markdown.

_{This question was inspired by a Super User question about mixing font sizes in Excel chart titles.}

It feels like this should be asked on meta.stackoverflow.com instead. It's not about programming, but about how to format a post on Stack Overflow. If I had to guess, this is not a Markdown "problem", but it depends on the CSS used on the rendered HTML page. — knittl
– knittl, Commented Jul 15 at 17:49
I agree: this is not a software development question, and the topic belongs to meta discussion. I would also add: there are different flavors of Markdown, not only different styles. If your question is specific to Stackoverflow rendering, the answer is: you cannot change it, this is what it is. Don't you think it is natural style, to add some gap between a header and a next paragraph? — Sergey A Kryukov
– Sergey A Kryukov, Commented Jul 16 at 0:50
@knittl I would argue this question is as relevant to programming as any other markdown related question on the site. — Stevoisiak
– Stevoisiak, Commented Jul 16 at 12:44
When using a h1 in a blockquote you'll see the default h1-margins. SO (and other platforms like github) may add a CSS rule to remove this margins in blockquotes. But you can't override this style in markdown itself. Bear in mind markdown is not intended as a full-blown HTML abstraction. These style restrictions are intentional to prevent potentially distracting style changes across multiple posts. While I agree from a design prespective the defaults could sometimes be prettier (epecially tables) - I really doubt we'll ever see extensions allowing us more typographic options in markdown — herrstrietzel
– herrstrietzel, Commented Jul 20 at 18:27

DCR · Accepted Answer · 2025-07-16 22:04:41Z

0

You can't do both on stackoverflow

BIG CHART TITLE
metric 1
metric 2
metric 3

BIG CHART TITLE
metric1
metric2
metric3

BIG CHART TITLE

metric1
metric2
metric3

edited Jul 16 at 22:04

answered Jul 16 at 21:08

DCR

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