Writing & Markdown

Text Formatting

Learn how to use bold, italic, strikethrough, headings, subscript, superscript, and other text formatting in Hugo Markdown.

Inline Formatting

DescriptionSyntaxResult
Bold**Bold**Bold
Italic*Italic*Italic
Bold & Italic***Both***Both
Strikethrough~~Strike~~Strike
Inline code`code`code
Subscript<sub>sub</sub>sub
Superscript<sup>super</sup>super
Underline<ins>underline</ins>underline
Highlight<mark>highlight</mark>highlight

Headings

# Heading 1
## Heading 2
### Heading 3
#### Heading 4
##### Heading 5
###### Heading 6

Use headings hierarchically — don't skip levels (e.g., jump from ## to ####). This improves both accessibility and SEO.

Heading IDs

Hugo automatically generates anchor IDs from headings. For example, ## My Section produces the anchor #my-section.

You can link to any heading on the page:

See [My Section](#my-section) for details.

Horizontal Rules

Create a horizontal rule with three or more hyphens, asterisks, or underscores:

---

Line Breaks

End a line with two spaces or use <br> for a line break within a paragraph:

First line.  
Second line (note the two trailing spaces above).

Or use HTML: First line.<br>Second line.

Escape Characters

Use a backslash \ to display literal Markdown characters:

\*Not italic\*
\# Not a heading
\[Not a link\]

*Not italic*

Was this page helpful?

From the makers of

© 2026 Lore Labs.

On this page