Line Blocks

A line block is a sequence of lines each introduced by |, rendered without the paragraph reflow ordinary text gets — the construct RST uses for poetry and addresses.

A Plain Line Block

A Deliberately Blank Line

A bare | with nothing after it is a deliberately blank line in the output — unlike a genuinely blank source line, which would end the block instead.

Nesting

Indenting the text after a | — not the | itself — nests that line one level deeper than its siblings:

Multiple Nesting Levels

Each further increase in indentation nests one level deeper still, and a return to a shallower indentation closes those levels again:

A Wrapped Continuation Line

A physical line with no | of its own, indented to align under the previous line's text, continues that same logical line rather than starting a new one:

A Line Block Inside a Block Quote

Indenting a line block without any enclosing directive nests it inside a block quote, exactly as it does for a bullet list or a directive (see block_quotes.rst for the same behavior from that construct's side).

Indented once,

this line block sits inside a block quote.