Newlines in markdown

Markdown ignores newlines and concatenates short lines of text together. For instance, take the following text in a Markdown file:

The Markdown engine takes multiple lines,
which are not separated by a double space,
and concatinates them into a single line.
Placing a \ after each line, disables this
behavior so that each line is separated.

These 5 separate lines, when processed through the Markdown engine, will output a single line of text:

The Markdown engine takes multiple lines, which are not separated by a double space, and concatinates them into a single line. Placing a \ after each line, disables this behavior so that each line is separated.

Maintain the original formatting by placing a \ after each line:

The Markdown engine takes multiple lines,\
which are not separated by a double space,\
and concatinates them into a single line.\
Placing a \ after each line, disables this\
behavior so that each line is separated.

The \ maintains the original format without having to use code blocks or preformatting tags:

The Markdown engine takes multiple lines,
which are not separated by a double space,
and concatinates them into a single line.
Placing a \ after each line, disables this
behavior so that each line is separated.