Using Markdown

Adding Bold and Italic Text in Markdown

Learn how to emphasize text in Markdown by adding bold and italics texts.

Want to put emphasis on some text? Make it bold. Or, italicize the text or underline it.

The choice is yours and Markdown gives you the ability to employ all these text decoration.

You can use asterisk (*) or underscore (_) for this purpose:

Syntax	Description
text	For bold text
text	For italic text
__text__	For bold text
_text_	For italic text

Let's see in details.

Add bold text in Markdown

As I showed above, there are two ways to add bold text in Markdown. You add asterisks (**) or two underscores (__) before and after the text you want highlight in bold. I advise using asterisks because underscores need a space before and after.

Let me show that with examples.

To highlight any text in bold, just add ** before and after it. The markdown text below

This is **bold** text

is rendered as:

This is bold text

The same works with ths use of double scores as well. However, the double asterisks can be used to highlight letters inside a word but it doesn't work with underscores.

This screenshot shows it better. Enlarge the image and check the rendered text on the right.

Bold text example in Markdown — Markdown bold text examples (click to enlarge)

Add italic text in Markdown

Similar to bold text, you use asterisk and underscore for italic text as well. The only difference is that you use single asterisk and underscore for italicizing the text.

Let me show it with examples.

To highlight any text in italics, just add * before and after it. The markdown text below

This is *italic* text

is rendered as:

This is italic text

Like bold text, underscores cannot be used to italicized text inside a word as it needs white space before and after.

This screenshot shows it better. Enlarge the image and check the rendered text on the right.

Italic text example in Markdown — Markdown italic text examples (click to enlarge)

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As you can see, using * is better because it can work even if it is not preceeded with a space. The underscores don't work without proper spacing.

What about underscores?

Bold, italics and underscores are often grouped together. However, the classic Markdown doesn't have any syntax for adding underscore text.

Keep forgetting the Markdown syntax? Use this cheat sheet:

Download Markdown Syntax Cheatsheet

Or, this guide:

I hope enjoy this quick Markdown tip.

Using Markdown

Using Markdown