How to Escape Characters in Markdown

Markdown uses special characters for formatting. Sometimes you need them to appear literally. Here's every way to escape them.

Backslash Escape

Put a backslash \ before any special character:

markdown
\*This is not italic\*
\# This is not a heading
\[This is not a link\]

Characters You Can Escape

HTML Entities

Inside Code Blocks

Characters inside code blocks never need escaping — they're always literal:

markdown

This is bold syntax, not bold text. This is link syntax

Use code blocks when showing markdown syntax examples.

The Pipe in Tables

| is the trickiest — it's the table column separator. To include a literal pipe in a cell:

markdown
| Example | Code |
|---------|------|
| Logical OR | `a \| b` |
| Bitwise OR | `a | b` |

Both \| and | work. The HTML entity is more universally supported.

HTML in Markdown

Raw HTML passes through most processors:

markdown
<kbd>Ctrl</kbd> + <kbd>S</kbd>

Useful for: keyboard shortcuts (<kbd>), subscript (<sub>), superscript (<sup>), underline (<u>).

Quick Decision Guide

Test your escaping in MarkGenie's live preview — you'll immediately see if the character is rendering as formatting or literal text.