Literal Blocks

Raw reStructuredText:

A paragraph containing only two colons
indicates that the following indented
or quoted text is a literal block.

::

  Whitespace, newlines, blank lines, and
  all kinds of markup (like *this* or
  \this) is preserved by literal blocks.

  The paragraph containing only '::'
  will be omitted from the result.

The ``::`` may be tacked onto the very
end of any paragraph. The ``::`` will be
omitted if it is preceded by whitespace.
The ``::`` will be converted to a single
colon if preceded by text, like this::

  It's very convenient to use this form.

Literal blocks end when text returns to
the preceding paragraph's indentation.
This means that something like this
is possible::

      We start here
    and continue here
  and end here.

Per-line quoting can also be used on
unindented literal blocks::

> Useful for quotes from email and
> for Haskell literate programming.

Typical result:

A paragraph containing only two colons indicates that the following indented or quoted text is a literal block.

Whitespace, newlines, blank lines, and
all kinds of markup (like *this* or
\this) is preserved by literal blocks.

The paragraph containing only '::'
will be omitted from the result.

The :: may be tacked onto the very end of any paragraph. The :: will be omitted if it is preceded by whitespace. The :: will be converted to a single colon if preceded by text, like this:

It's very convenient to use this form.

Literal blocks end when text returns to the preceding paragraph’s indentation. This means that something like this is possible:

    We start here
  and continue here
and end here.

Per-line quoting can also be used on unindented literal blocks:

> Useful for quotes from email and
> for Haskell literate programming.