I wondered whether escaping would work, but not enough to test it.

I actually like the escaping method better because

• My time spent with git has resulted in me seeing lots of editors argue about whether whitespace at the end of a line is acceptable, but I prefer to do without
• I post almost exclusively from my mobile device, so two spaces create a full stop where I don’t want one
• I’m accustomed to escaping newlines from my shell scripting experience, so it looks right to me
• It reminds me of xkcd, which I have frequently enjoyed

Regardless of which method any of us use, thank you for the information!