AUTOESCAPE / MARKDOWN
Markdown Escape
Keep punctuation literal rather than turning it into formatting.
HTML escape / unescape
Turn reserved characters into HTML entities, or bring them back.
Ready when you are. Conversion happens as you type.
Markdown: punctuation without the surprise formatting.
Markdown is convenient until the text you are documenting happens to look like Markdown. Asterisks can make words bold. A hash can begin a heading. Brackets and parentheses can form a link. When you want the symbols themselves, a backslash escape can keep them literal.
This tool takes a deliberately conservative approach: it escapes ASCII punctuation, not just a short list of the most visible formatting symbols. The result may contain more backslashes than you would write by hand, but its purpose is literal text rather than attractive Markdown source.
**Keep this literal** [not a link](example.com)
\*\*Keep this literal\*\* \[not a link\]\(example\.com\)
Useful places to use it
Try it for plain-text examples in Markdown documentation, issue descriptions or comments where copied punctuation keeps turning into formatting. It can also help when a label or phrase contains characters you do not want the renderer to interpret.
When a code span is the better choice
If you are showing source code, a command or a technical expression, an inline code span or fenced code block is often clearer than escaping every punctuation character. Backslash escapes do not work the same way inside code blocks. Choose the format that explains the content best.
Markdown dialects differ. CommonMark-style renderers support punctuation escapes in ordinary text, but tables, embedded HTML, URLs and platform-specific extensions introduce other rules. Always check the final rendered result on the platform where you will publish it.
Markdown is escape-only here. A generic unescape pass could reactivate formatting you intended to show as text.