The following blockquote quotes the first paragraph of the Mardown documentation regarding blockquotes:

Markdown uses email-style > characters for blockquoting. If you’re familiar with quoting passages of text in an email message, then you know how to create a blockquote in Markdown. It looks best if you hard wrap the text and put a > before every line.

All of the above quote was on a single line, but what if I wanted to break it into three separate paragraphs? For example:

Markdown uses email-style > characters for blockquoting.

If you’re familiar with quoting passages of text in an email message, then you know how to create a blockquote in Markdown.

It looks best if you hard wrap the text and put a > before every line.

The Markdown for the above is as follows:

> Markdown uses email-style > characters for blockquoting.
>
> If you’re familiar with quoting passages of text in an email message, then you know how to create a blockquote in Markdown.\\
>
> It looks best if you hard wrap the text and put a > before every line.

Note that if you neglect the > in the empty lines, you end-up with three separate blockquotes:

Markdown uses email-style > characters for blockquoting.

If you’re familiar with quoting passages of text in an email message, then you know how to create a blockquote in Markdown.

It looks best if you hard wrap the text and put a > before every line.