It is more typical to italicize a blockquote, perhaps with leading `>` to mark it out:
> like this
- and this is a list-item
- and so is this
it's just a matter of courtesy to those using smaller screens and assistive technologies
Thanks!
- I don't
- think that
- individual paragraphs
- for a list
- is a very good
- use of space
- on small screens
- or on large ones
Code blocks are crappy for small screens, but so are lists written as a series of paragraphs.
Unfortunately, HN seems opposed to supporting non-paragraph linebreaks, lists, blockquotes, or any other sort of formatting. That's fine, it's up to dang and the other admins who run the place and they don't want to support other formatting, but it means that the code format gets abused as a poor approximation for these things.
EDIT: I should also point out that your source says "fixed-width is intended for code." You left that word out and it's an important one. If it said "is only for code" the meaning would be different.
Side note, reddit lets you do a line break by ending a line with two spaces before hitting enter. Just tested to double check, it doesn't work here. I wish it did, and replacing space-space-newline with <br> seems like a pretty trivial and unobjectionable feature, but here we are.
Horizontal scrolling is harder to do and less common/conventional (chicken and egg as to why, but it's the reality today).
You might not like the way it looks, but it's clearly better for usability to spend more vertical space in order to prevent horizontal scrolling.
The problem is that anything beyond a certain length gets clipped and has to be scrolled from side-to-side which is a very hard way to read.
happilly
scroll down all day and it
is more harmonious with how
my brain likes to read!
As a HN reader I understand and accept the limitations of the formatting.