Paragraphs strung together when editing a post

[nsxtasy]

This has only started happening in the past few days.

When I have several paragraphs in a post, separated by two hard-typed line breaks (just as I am doing here in this post), and I then hit EDIT to edit my post, those paragraphs appear all strung together without the line breaks showing. So they look like it's all one paragraph.

Then when I hit SAVE on the edited post, the line breaks return. So they're not gone forever. But it's very confusing to try to edit a post without being able to see where the line breaks are. I don't know why this just started happening, because it wasn't doing this in the past.

It's not happening all the time, just most of the time. The rest of the time, it shows all the paragraphs, but inserts a tab character at the start of each paragraph. I think that's a separate problem, because it's been there for a while and has been reported here in the past.

I'm using IE9 in Windows 7.

[DeborahL]

Hi nxstasy.

I wasn't able to reproduce this behavior in IE9/Win7 here at CHOW. As you mentioned, it seems an intermittent problem. Could you perhaps take a screen shot next time it happens and attach it to a post here?

Thank you!

[nsxtasy]

Will do!

[nsxtasy]

Shots attached showing before and during edit.

[DeborahL]

Thank you nxstasy! We'll keep looking into this.

[DeborahL]

OK nxstasy, I was able to reproduce this (your screen grabs helped a lot!), and I think it has to do with quoting from the previous comment/beginning your post with those two close-carat marks:

>>I'm staying at ...

Does this loss of paragraph breaks ever happen if you aren't including a quote from the previous comment?

[nsxtasy]

>> Does this loss of paragraph breaks ever happen if you aren't including a quote from the previous comment?

Yes, definitely. It just happened to me a few minutes ago with my post at www.chow.com/topics/874852#7667688 See screen shots below.

[DeborahL]

Thanks for all the info you've provided us nsxtasy. Since this is an intermittent problem, we're not able to reproduce it consistently, which means it's very difficult to pinpoint and address. We'll keep an eye on it though.

[Engineering]

We've had a long history of Edit behaving oddly on IE- what you're describing sounds a lot like some of the safeguards we've put in place for that browser going haywire. Did you encounter the issue on Tuesday or earlier? Or was the first time you noticed it yesterday?

[nsxtasy]

I had noticed it for about a week prior to the date when I reported it above.

[nsxtasy]

P.S. I recently switched from IE8 to IE9, and it's possible that this is only happening under the newer browser version...

[Engineering]

You're certain that you didn't see the problem until after you started using IE9? That would make a significant difference in how we approach this.

[nsxtasy]

I think so.

And it's not happening consistently; some of the time, it reverts to its earlier behavior, in which it displayes the paragraphs double-spaced, but inserts a tab character at the start of each. But the problem is still happening some of the time; see screen shots below.

[toodie jane]

this has happened to me occasionally for the past year or so--very random. I agree, disconcerting but not enough to keep me from editing ;-)