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The Dead Simple Markdown Guide to Escaping Characters

by TypesettingAugust 20th, 2024

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To display special characters in Markdown, use a backslash (\) before the character. This technique helps you show symbols that might otherwise be interpreted as formatting commands, such as asterisks or brackets.

Escaping Characters

To display a literal character that would otherwise be used to format text in a Markdown document, add a backslash (\) in front of the character.

\* Without the backslash, this would be a bullet in an unordered list.

The rendered output looks like this:

* Without the backslash, this would be a bullet in an unordered list.

Characters You Can Escape

You can use a backslash to escape the following characters.

Character	Name
	backslash
`	backtick (see also escaping backticks in code)
*	asterisk
_	underscore
{ }	curly braces
[ ]	brackets
< >	angle brackets
( )	parentheses
#	pound sign
+	plus sign
-	minus sign (hyphen)
.	dot
!	exclamation mark
\|	pipe (see also escaping pipe in tables)