Basic formatting syntaxt in obsidian

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aliases:
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  - How to/Format your notes
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  - Markdown
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description: Learn how to apply basic formatting to your notes in Obsidian, using Markdown.
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publish: true
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mobile: true

Learn how to apply basic formatting to your notes, using Markdown. For more advanced formatting syntax, refer to Advanced formatting syntax.

Paragraphs

To create paragraphs in Markdown, use a blank line to separate blocks of text. Each block of text separated by a blank line is treated as a distinct paragraph.

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This is a paragraph.
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This is another paragraph.

This is a paragraph.

This is another paragraph.

A blank line between lines of text creates separate paragraphs. This is the default behavior in Markdown.

Multiple adjacent blank spaces within and between paragraphs collapse into a single space when displayed in Reading view or on Obsidian Publish sites.

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Multiple          adjacent          spaces
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and multiple newlines between paragraphs.

Multiple adjacent spaces

and multiple newlines between paragraphs.

If you want to prevent spaces from collapsing or add multiple blank spaces, you can use the   (non-breaking space) or <br> (line break) HTML tags.

Line breaks

By default in Obsidian, pressing Enter once will create a new line in your note, but this is treated as a continuation of the same paragraph in the rendered output, following typical Markdown behavior. To insert a line break within a paragraph without starting a new paragraph, you can either:

• Add two spaces at the end of a line before pressing Enter, or
• Use the shortcut Shift + Enter to directly insert a line break.

Why don’t multiple Enter presses create more line breaks in reading view?

In Markdown, a single Enter is ignored, and multiple consecutive Enter presses result in just one new paragraph. This behavior aligns with Markdown’s soft wrap rule, where extra blank lines do not generate additional line breaks or paragraphs—they are collapsed into a single paragraph break. This is how Markdown handles text by default, ensuring that paragraphs flow naturally without unexpected breaks​.

Obsidian includes a Strict Line Breaks setting, which makes Obsidian follow the standard Markdown specification for line breaks.

To enable this feature:

1. Open Settings.
2. Go to the Editor tab.
3. Enable Strict Line Breaks.

When Strict Line Breaks is enabled in Obsidian, line breaks have three distinct behaviors depending on how the lines are separated:

Single return with no spaces: A single Enter with no trailing spaces will combine the two separate lines into a single line when rendered.

Renders as:

line one line two

Single return with two or more trailing spaces: If you add two or more spaces at the end of the first line before pressing Enter, the two lines remain part of the same paragraph, but are broken by a line break (HTML <br> element). We’ll use two underscores to stand in for spaces in this example.

Renders as:

Double return (with or without trailing spaces): Pressing Enter twice (or more) separates the lines into two distinct paragraphs (HTML <p> elements), regardless of whether you add spaces at the end of the first line.

Renders as:

Headings

To create a heading, add up to six # symbols before your heading text. The number of # symbols determines the size of the heading.

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# This is a heading 1
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## This is a heading 2
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### This is a heading 3
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#### This is a heading 4
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##### This is a heading 5
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###### This is a heading 6

This is a heading 1

This is a heading 2

This is a heading 3

This is a heading 4

This is a heading 5

This is a heading 6

Bold, italics, highlights

Formatting can be forced to display in plain text by adding a backslash \ in front of it.

**This line will not be bold**

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\*\*This line will not be bold\*\*

*This line will be italic and show the asterisks*

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\**This line will be italic and show the asterisks*\*

Internal links

Obsidian supports two formats for internal links between notes:

• Wikilink: [[Three laws of motion]]
• Markdown: [Three laws of motion](Three%20laws%20of%20motion.md)

External links

If you want to link to an external URL, you can create an inline link by surrounding the link text in brackets ([ ]), and then the URL in parentheses (( )).

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[Obsidian Help](https://help.obsidian.md)

You can also create external links to files in other vaults, by linking to an Obsidian URI.

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[Note](obsidian://open?vault=MainVault&file=Note.md)

Escape blank spaces in links

If your URL contains blank spaces, you must escape them by replacing them with %20.

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[My Note](obsidian://open?vault=MainVault&file=My%20Note.md)

You can also escape the URL by wrapping it with angled brackets (< >).

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[My Note](<obsidian://open?vault=MainVault&file=My Note.md>)

External images

You can add images with external URLs, by adding a ! symbol before an external link.

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![Engelbart](https://history-computer.com/ModernComputer/Basis/images/Engelbart.jpg)

You can change the image dimensions, by adding |640x480 to the link destination, where 640 is the width and 480 is the height.

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![Engelbart|100x145](https://history-computer.com/ModernComputer/Basis/images/Engelbart.jpg)

If you only specify the width, the image scales according to its original aspect ratio. For example:

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![Engelbart|100](https://history-computer.com/ModernComputer/Basis/images/Engelbart.jpg)

Quotes

You can quote text by adding a > symbols before the text.

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> Human beings face ever more complex and urgent problems, and their effectiveness in dealing with these problems is a matter that is critical to the stability and continued progress of society.
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\- Doug Engelbart, 1961

Human beings face ever more complex and urgent problems, and their effectiveness in dealing with these problems is a matter that is critical to the stability and continued progress of society.

- Doug Engelbart, 1961

You can turn your quote into a callout by adding [!info] as the first line in a quote.

Lists

You can create an unordered list by adding a -, *, or + before the text.

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- First list item
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- Second list item
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- Third list item

• First list item
• Second list item
• Third list item

To create an ordered list, start each line with a number followed by a . symbol.

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1. First list item
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2. Second list item
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3. Third list item

1. First list item
2. Second list item
3. Third list item

Task lists

To create a task list, start each list item with a hyphen and space followed by [ ].

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- [x] This is a completed task.
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- [ ] This is an incomplete task.

• This is a completed task.
• This is an incomplete task.

You can toggle a task in Reading view by selecting the checkbox.

You can use any character inside the brackets to mark it as complete.

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- [x] Milk
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- [?] Eggs
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- [-] Eggs

• Milk
• Eggs
• Eggs

Nesting lists

You can nest any type of list—ordered, unordered, or task lists—under any other type of list.

To create a nested list, indent one or more list items. You can mix list types within a nested structure:

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1. First list item
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   1. Ordered nested list item
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2. Second list item
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   - Unordered nested list item

1. First list item
2. Ordered nested list item
3. Second list item

• Unordered nested list item

Similarly, you can create a nested task list by indenting one or more list items:

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- [ ] Task item 1
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  - [ ] Subtask 1
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- [ ] Task item 2
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  - [ ] Subtask 1

• Task item 1
• Subtask 1
• Task item 2
• Subtask 1

Use Tab or Shift+Tab to indent or unindent selected list items to easily organize them.

Horizontal rule

You can use three or more stars ***, hyphens ---, or underscore ___ on its own line to add a horizontal bar. You can also separate symbols using spaces.

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***
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****
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* * *
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---
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----
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- - -
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___
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____
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_ _ _

Code

You can format code both inline within a sentence, or in its own block.

Inline code

You can format code within a sentence using single backticks.

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Text inside \`backticks\` on a line will be formatted like code.

Text inside backticks on a line will be formatted like code.

If you want to put backticks in an inline code block, surround it with double backticks like so: inline code with a backtick ` inside.

Code blocks

To format a block of code, surround the code with triple backticks.

You can also create a code block by indenting the text using Tab or 4 blank spaces.

You can add syntax highlighting to a code block, by adding a language code after the first set of backticks.

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\`\`\`js
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function fancyAlert(arg) {
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  if(arg) {
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    $.facebox({div:'#foo'})
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  }
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}
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\`\`\`

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function fancyAlert(arg) {
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  if(arg) {
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    $.facebox({div:'#foo'})
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  }
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}

Obsidian uses Prism for syntax highlighting. For more information, refer to Supported languages.

Footnotes

You can add footnotes^[1] to your notes using the following syntax:

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This is a simple footnote[^1].
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[^1]: This is the referenced text.
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[^2]: Add 2 spaces at the start of each new line.
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  This lets you write footnotes that span multiple lines.
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[^note]: Named footnotes still appear as numbers, but can make it easier to identify and link references.

You can also inline footnotes in a sentence. Note that the caret goes outside the brackets.

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You can also use inline footnotes. ^[This is an inline footnote.]

Inline footnotes only work in reading view, not in Live Preview.

Comments

You can add comments by wrapping text with %%. Comments are only visible in Editing view.

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This is an %%inline%% comment.
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%%
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This is a block comment.
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Block comments can span multiple lines.
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%%

Escaping Markdown Syntax

In some cases, you may need to display special characters in Markdown, such as *, _, or #, without triggering their formatting. To display these characters literally, place a backslash (\) before them.

Common characters to escape

• Asterisk: \*
• Underscore: \_
• Hashtag: \#
• Backtick: \`
• Pipe (used in tables): \|
• Tilde: \~

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\*This text will not be italicized\*.

*This text will not be italicized*.

When working with numbered lists, you may need to escape the period after the number to prevent automatic list formatting. Place the backslash (\) before the period, not before the number.

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1\. This won't be a list item.

1. This won’t be a list item.