Discord/formatting

Discord text formatting

Text formatting is similar to a subset of Markdown, although there are differences:

• bold is **two asterisks**
• italic is *one asterisk* or _one underscore_
  • They are rendered exactly the same (using <em>) but parsed differently: "a*b*c" becomes abc but a_b_c is left unformatted.
• underline is __two underscores__
• strike is ~~two tildes~~
• code (fixed-pitch inline unformatted text) is `backticks`
  • You can use this format to paste URLs without them becoming links or displaying a preview.
  • There's a better way to just suppress previews, however: see #Previews.
• multiple lines of code can be started with three backticks at the beginning of a line:

```
code lines
code lines
```

• the initial backticks can have a language designator afterwards, for syntax highlighting:

```php
php code...
```

• > (right-angle plus a space) will cause the following paragraph to be indented with a vertical bar
• spoiler text is ||two pipes||: this causes the text to be obscured until clicked on (similar to this but requiring a click rather than mouse-hover)

To display characters that would otherwise be treated as formatting, escape them with a backslash:

• \* will display as *
• \_ will display as _
• This does not seem to work with backticks (`), however.
• >>> escapes emoji (haven't had time to explore in order to describe it precisely)

Previews

To display a link without Discord also inserting a preview, surround the URL with angle brackets: <https://htyp.org>. The angle brackets will not be displayed, and preview will be suppressed, but the URL will be presented as a link.

• Note: Discord's settings refer to the preview as an "embedded link". Previews of links pasted into a discussion can be turned off by revoking this privilege.