Adding Bold and Italic Text in Markdown

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:

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.

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.

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:

Or, this guide:

Basic Markdown Syntax Explained [With Free Cheat Sheet]

Learning markdown could help you a lot with writing for web. Here’s a complete beginner’s guide to Markdown syntax with downloadable cheat sheet.

It's FOSSBill Dyer

I hope enjoy this quick Markdown tip.