47

What special formatting tricks can be done in the comments now?

Proven:

  • **text** or __text__ = Bolding = text
  • *text* or _text_ = Italics = text
  • `text` = Code Formatting = text
  • [example](http://example.com "title") Inline links with title and text
  • http://example.com plain old links

Disproven:

  • Cannot insert <kbd> (i.e. F12) characters
  • Cannot use #[text] to increase size
9
  • Really?
    – perbert
    Apr 1, 2010 at 14:44
  • 1
    No bold italic. ([No links in parentheses](www.google.com))
    – badp
    Jul 18, 2010 at 12:43
  • 1
    Whoops! If you put text before and after it, you can do bold italic -- just not bold italic alone.
    – badp
    Jul 18, 2010 at 12:49
  • 10
    Multiple code lines work?? string hexString = string.Format("{0:X}", -5); long hexValue = long.Parse(hexString, NumberStyles.AllowHexSpecifier);
    – VitalyB
    Sep 10, 2010 at 14:27
  • 2
    +1 to VitalyB. Line breaks are important
    – Aximili
    Oct 20, 2011 at 23:47
  • 1
    And you can escape characters: *this isn't italic*, **this isn't bold**, `this isn't codified`.
    – Daniel
    Feb 18, 2016 at 2:52
  • 2
    Yeah guys, will you be adding multiple code lines in comments? That would be great since some times you need to edit/update the OP for add a piece of code
    – ReynierPM
    Oct 18, 2016 at 15:52
  • example.com Apr 26, 2017 at 16:32
  • link Mar 15, 2022 at 22:40

5 Answers 5

17

click the help link under [add comment] to see a summary of the available formatting options.

commenting help

4
  • 3
    This is good, but might be clearer if there isn't a line break just after the ] of [link].
    – Richard
    Feb 2, 2011 at 7:39
  • 1
    There is now even a "Learn more..." link to a help page with more information (including some shorthand links not yet mentioned here).
    – Fr33dan
    Sep 24, 2013 at 13:53
  • @jeff-atwood does @ work to notify commenters?... at least, if it does, for a while now there has been no link to the user's profile as it used to be before whatever change was made... also, there is no special styling to identify the person as, well, a person (as opposed to just characters after a @...) Nov 26, 2019 at 22:38
  • @Richard, I'm writing this 8 years and 9 months after your comment, and the line break is still there!... Nov 26, 2019 at 22:40
1

The only bad thing is that it counts the markup toward the number of characters. So bolding something means you can actually enter 4 characters less. Of course, this effectively makes the minimum comment length 11.

0
0

This is something that is only very recent - see http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001285.html for more info.

0

This was new as of 2009-7-3, there is a comment by Jeff under this answer which was posted on 2009-6-29:

I would really like some of the basic markdown stuff be added, for example


`code highlight`
*italic*
**bold**
***bold italic***
hey look! italic and bold and some escaped *code* sample – Jeff Atwood♦

I also mentioned it on the 30th:

At least, I would want bold and italic to work.

As for syntax highlighting, you don't get that for simple inlined code sections, so why would you need it in comments.

Which means it had to have been implemented between 2009-6-30 and 2009-7-3.

2
  • 1
    bold and italic?
    – RedFilter
    Jan 12, 2010 at 21:40
  • *asterisk* d
    – RedFilter
    Jan 12, 2010 at 21:41
0

This micro-ing of the MD format is annoying, because

  • it does not allow
  • the list-bullets,
  • in the comments. :-/
2
  • 1
    If you want to put a bullet list in a comment, that means you don't know what comments are for
    – user315433
    Sep 18, 2017 at 11:50
  • 1
    "Leave constructive criticism" and "fundamental change" is exactly my point: The original answer had bullets, and to be 'constructive' and to show my point, I need bullets too.
    – Franta
    Sep 18, 2017 at 14:26

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