Escaping Characters in Markdown

Backslash escapes

A backslash tells the parser to treat the next character as plain text. Use it whenever a character would otherwise trigger formatting: an asterisk around a word, a hash at the start of a line, or a number followed by a period that would start a list.

\*not italic\*
\# Not a heading
2026\. A line that starts with a year
\[not a link\](https://example.com)
\_\_init\_\_.py

Characters you can escape

CommonMark allows a backslash before any ASCII punctuation character: ! " # $ % & ' ( ) * + , - . / : ; < = > ? @ [ \ ] ^ _ ` { | } ~. A backslash before anything else, such as a letter, is shown literally. These are the ones you will actually need:

Angle brackets: showing <> in Markdown

Markdown passes HTML through, so a < followed by letters looks like a tag. GitHub removes tags it does not recognize, which means List<String> can render as just "List". Escape the opening bracket, use the HTML entity &lt;, or put the text in inline code.

List\<String\>
List&lt;String&gt;
`List<String>`
\<br> shows the tag instead of breaking the line

Square brackets that are not links

Brackets only become a link when followed by a URL in parentheses or when the text matches a reference definition, so [draft] on its own usually displays fine. Escape them when parentheses follow, or at the start of a list item where "[ ]" would turn into a checkbox.

\[1\](see appendix) stays as text
- \[ \] literal brackets, not a task list checkbox

Backticks inside code

Backslash escapes do not work inside code spans. The backslash is shown as-is. To show a backtick inside inline code, wrap the code in two backticks with spaces inside. To show a fenced block inside a code block, use a longer fence on the outside.

`` `backtick` ``

````markdown
```js
console.log("fenced");
```
````

Pipes in tables

A pipe inside a table cell ends the cell, even inside inline code. Escape it with a backslash; GitHub Flavored Markdown removes the backslash in the output, including within code spans.

| Operator | Meaning |
|----------|---------|
| `a \| b` | Bitwise OR |
| \|\| | Logical OR |

Where backslash escapes work

Escaping is part of core Markdown, so support is nearly universal. The exceptions are places that are not rendered as Markdown at all.