Multi-line Text (| and >)

YAML has two ways to write text that spans multiple lines, and the one you pick changes how the resume renders. Getting this right is the single biggest source of formatting surprise for new users.

The two operators

| — literal block (keep line breaks)

Each line you write becomes a line in the output.

content: |
  First line.
  Second line.
  Third line.

Renders as:

First line.
Second line.
Third line.

Use this for:

• Bullet lists (one bullet per line).
• Multi-paragraph text where line breaks matter.
• Code samples or addresses.

> — folded block (line breaks become spaces)

Line breaks in the source become single spaces in the output. Blank lines become paragraph breaks.

content: >
  This is a long sentence
  that wraps across multiple
  lines in the YAML file.

Renders as:

This is a long sentence that wraps across multiple lines in the YAML file.

Use this for:

• Flowing prose (summary, cover letter text).
• Long descriptions where you want to wrap for source readability but not in output.

Bullet list pattern

For bullet points in an experience description, use | plus a bullet character:

- company: TechCorp
  position: Senior Engineer
  start: "2022"
  end: "present"
  description: |
    • Led microservices migration for the payments platform
    • Mentored 5 junior engineers on distributed systems
    • Reduced deployment time by 70% via CI/CD optimization
  technologies: [Go, Kubernetes, PostgreSQL]

We use • (U+2022 bullet) because it renders cleanly in every theme. - works too but looks thinner. Avoid * since some themes treat it as Markdown emphasis in descriptions.

Paragraph pattern

For a multi-paragraph summary, use > with blank lines between paragraphs:

- type: text
  title: Summary
  content: >
    Senior software engineer with 8 years building distributed systems
    in Go and Python. Focus on observability, clean architecture, and
    pragmatic trade-offs.


    Currently leading a team of 6 on the billing platform rewrite at
    TechCorp. Open to staff-level roles with product ownership.

Note the blank line between paragraphs — with >, a single line break becomes a space, but a blank line stays as a paragraph break.

Mixing plain text and block scalars

You can mix styles inside the same YAML file freely. Short fields stay inline, long ones use blocks.

- type: text
  title: About
  content: Short one-liner that fits on one line, no block scalar needed.

- type: text
  title: Cover Letter
  content: >
    Several paragraphs of flowing text. Line breaks in the source
    become spaces. Blank lines separate paragraphs.


    This is paragraph two.

Common mistakes

Forgot the block scalar, got everything on one line

# Wrong — line breaks are ignored in plain scalars
description:
  Line one
  Line two

YAML folds plain (unquoted) scalars like > does. Fix: add | or >.

Mixed indentation inside a block

# Wrong — mixed indentation
description: |
  First line
   Second line    # extra space at start
    Third line    # even more indentation

Every line inside a | or > block must share the same base indentation. Most editors highlight this as an error.

Quoted strings forget to escape newlines

# Wrong — single-line quoted string with literal newline
description: "Line one
Line two"

Prefer block scalars (| / >) over quoted strings for anything multi-line. They are more forgiving and more readable.

Reference

The full YAML 1.2 spec covers more exotic modifiers (|-, >+, |>, etc.) that control trailing whitespace. For devResume, | and > are almost always what you want. See the official spec if you need finer control.