Wikimedia Bugzilla is closed!

I was just writing a template and was surprised when syntax similar to `{{#ifeq:{{{param|}}}|value||; text here}}.  More text here.' was emboldened and given its own paragraph.  I was separating an optional statement off from the main sentence.  Having never used definitions before and therefore clueless why this happened, I took a guess and removd the semicolon.  Aha!  After Googling a bit, I found what the semicolon was for through the bug about the inappropriate <dl/> indentation caused by the colon.  Parser functions like this apparently begin new lines (or at least new matches) implicitly for every pipe, and thus I was seeing behavior I didn't explicitly ask for.

Workaround: Use the HTML entity &#59; (&#58; for colon) instead.

I suggest that:
* the "beginning of line" behavior of parser functions (and presumably templates) be rewritten so only an explicit newline begins a new match; and/or
* escape sequences be designed for the semicolon and colon at the match start, like maybe ;; and :; (additional semicolon for both).