iTunes Summary removes all line breaks

The iTunes desktop client doesn’t support HTML so it can be tricky sometimes to get even simple formatting to work in show descriptions. What I usually do is leave a blank line between “paragraphs” in my iTunes summaries and this seems to work for creating breaks. Example:

Paragraph of basic shownotes
(blank line)
Go to URL for complete shownotes

So if I want a line completely blank, I should put in two or three line breaks?

I think I tried that, and it just stripped out all line breaks, but I will try again.

I read somewhere else I could use UTF-8 characters, but I don’t know if this is true or how to do it?

I’ve only ever left one line break. Like this:

Paragraph one

Paragraph two

And it’s worked fine for me. And yes – I am entering this text into the iTunes Summary box in the Podcast Episode section of my posts.

One thing I can suggest is, if you’re typing the text in an application or editor outside of WordPress and copy/pasting into WordPress, don’t. Sometimes, doing this won’t copy information like line breaks properly into the WordPress editor, even if it looks OK in the editor at the time.

As far as Unicode goes, it’s my understand that the iTunes summary will display Unicode but I’ve never tried it. If you’re still having trouble, you could try inserting the Unicode commands for Carriage Return 0x000D I’ve not tried it myself so I can’t say whether or not it’ll work.

Thanks, I will try all these suggestions.

On that unicode thing, do I need to put any coding around it? Would it appear like this:

paragraph 1 &0x000D;
paragraph 2

Yes, I’d try it exactly as you’ve done here. Report back and let us know if it worked.

You have a plugin or a web service modifying your feed content. IT is removing all new lines. Removing the new line characters is why iTunes sees the content in the itunes:summary as one line rather then separate.

I see you are using WP Super cache, it may be doing this to “compress” the files. There may be another plugin causing this as well. Anything that has to do with minifying or compressing the HTML would cause this.

You know you’ve figured out what plugin is causing the issue when the PowerPress comment line is back within the XML of the podcast feed.

Angelo,

Thanks! That makes sense.

I will look into it. I was using HTML minify with the “WP Minify Fix” plugin.

The comment line is now back in the XML of my feed… At least, I think so. You are referring to this comment line, right:

<!-- podcast_generator="Blubrry PowerPress/6.0.5" mode="advanced" -->

Yes, I was using WP Super Cache as well. I am also using Cloudflare. Are those okay?

We have used cloudflare, it has only had problems when you need to configure the most aggressive settings.

WP Super cache shouldn’t pose this problem. usually with WP Super cache the problem is with the feed not updating promptly, the cache serving an older version of the feed.