No worries, the best way I've found to do it is to manually split the lines every 10 words or so.
So a paragraph that would run off the page and break mobile devices in normal circumstances should be broken in several places by a hard 'return' plus more spaces.
Is really just a collection of sentence fragments
that all fit the same formatting. There might be
a better way, but I don't know it!
If you're an emacs user, prefix the line with the desired number of spaces then type M-q, copy back into your browser. That's my solution to formatting block quotes at least. Your long line prexixed with 3 spaces in emacs:
So a paragraph that would run off the page and break mobile
devices in normal circumstances should be broken in several
places by a hard 'return' plus more spaces.
And your split-by-hand block quote:
Is really just a collection of sentence fragments that all
fit the same formatting. There might be a better way, but I
don't know it!
As a Vim newb (well, ok I can use it, but I'm not well-versed in its more arcane elements), how do you select lines? C-<space> in emacs starts region selection, but I've never tried to select anything in Vim.
> 32. Although I believe foregoing exchange demonstrates DPR's intention to solicit a murder-for-hire, I have spoken with Canadian law enforcement authorities, who have no record of there being any Canadian resident with the name DPR passed to redandwhite as the target of the solicited murder-for-hire. Nor do they have any record of a homicide occurring in White Rock, British Columbia on or about March 31, 2013"
Or an angle bracket, with an opening and closing asterisk.
> 32. Although I believe foregoing exchange demonstrates DPR's intention to solicit a murder-for-hire, I have spoken with Canadian law enforcement authorities, who have no record of there being any Canadian resident with the name DPR passed to redandwhite as the target of the solicited murder-for-hire. Nor do they have any record of a homicide occurring in White Rock, British Columbia on or about March 31, 2013"
This means you don't need to include any line breaks.
I've added (another) comment to the HN feature requests post asking for a real quote function, so that offtopic discussions like this can come to an end.
I just put in two spaces like the formatting guide said. But the whole thing ended being one line.