Blank line should be replaced with <p> to break lines

Reports blank lines in Javadoc comments.

Blank lines in Javadoc may signal an intention split the text to different paragraphs. However, the Javadoc tool and IntelliJ IDEA will ignore them when rendering documentation comments.

The quick-fix suggests to replace the blank line with a paragraph tag (<p>).

Example:

  class Main {
    /**
     * Doesn't do anything.
     *
     * Does absolutely nothing
     */
    void foo() {}
  }

After the quick-fix is applied:

  class Main {
    /**
     * Doesn't do anything.
     * <p>
     * Does absolutely nothing
     */
    void foo() {}
  }

Locating this inspection

By ID

Can be used to locate inspection in e.g. Qodana configuration files, where you can quickly enable or disable it, or adjust its settings.

JavadocBlankLines

Via Settings dialog

Path to the inspection settings via IntelliJ Platform IDE Settings dialog, when you need to adjust inspection settings directly from your IDE.

Settings or Preferences | Editor | Inspections | Java | Javadoc

New in 2022.1

Suppressing Inspection

You can suppress this inspection by placing the following comment marker before the code fragment where you no longer want messages from this inspection to appear:

//noinspection JavadocBlankLines

More detailed instructions as well as other ways and options that you have can be found in the product documentation:

IntelliJ IDEA 2025.2

Inspection Details
By default bundled with:	IntelliJ IDEA 2025.2, Qodana for JVM 2025.2,

Last modified: 18 September 2025