Basic formatting

Scoria parses Obsidian Flavored Markdown: CommonMark 0.31.2, the GitHub extensions Obsidian uses, and Obsidian's own syntax, all in one parser. All 652 CommonMark spec examples render byte-identical HTML, so if you know CommonMark, you know the base.

This page is the ordinary syntax. The pages after it cover links, embeds, callouts, properties, blocks and footnotes and tables, code and math.

Headings

markdown

# Heading 1
## Heading 2
###### Heading 6

A heading is # through ###### followed by a space. Headings appear in the Outline pane and are link targets: [[Note#Heading 2]].

Setext headings work too — a line of text underlined with === or ---:

markdown

Heading 1
=========

Note

A setext underline only applies to a one-line paragraph. After a longer paragraph, a --- is a horizontal rule, not an underline. This is Obsidian's behavior and Scoria matches it.

Emphasis

Syntax	Result
`italic` or `_italic_`	italic
`bold` or `__bold__`	bold
`*both*`	strong wrapping emphasis
`~~strikethrough~~`	~~strikethrough~~
`==highlight==`	highlighted
`code`	`code`

Several details here are Obsidian's rather than CommonMark's, and Scoria reproduces them:

~~ and == need exactly two delimiters. ~~~x~~~ and ===x=== delimit with their first two characters; the third stays inside the text.
A single _ cannot close before a letter or digit. That is what keeps snake_case_name from becoming italics halfway through, while a_b_ still emphasises the b.
A backtick run with no closer retries one backtick shorter, so a stray triple backtick in a line does not swallow the rest of it.
Legacy HTML entities decode without a semicolon — &copy is ©.

Lists

markdown

- a bullet
* also a bullet
+ and this

1. numbered
2. numbered
1) also numbered

- [ ] a task
- [x] a finished task
- [-] a task with any single character in the box

A task item takes any single character between the brackets, not just a space or an x — Obsidian uses that for cancelled and deferred states, and the character is preserved.

Note

- [ ] with nothing after the bracket is plain text, not a task.

Two indentation details differ from CommonMark, in Obsidian's favor:

A list marker indented four or more columns inside a list is a sibling item. CommonMark would make it a lazy continuation line of the previous item.
A > line directly after a list item's text stays inside that item.

While editing, Enter continues a list for you and Tab reindents it, renumbering what needs renumbering — see smart lists.

Quotes

markdown

> a quote
> > nested one level deeper

Each level draws its own bar. A quote whose first line opens with [!type] is a callout instead.

Horizontal rules

Three or more ---, *** or ___ on a line of their own.

Line breaks

A single newline inside a paragraph renders as a line break — Obsidian's default, which is CommonMark's "soft break" rendered hard. Turn strictLineBreaks on in app.json and a single newline becomes a space instead, as CommonMark specifies; Scoria honors the setting either way.

A blank line starts a new paragraph, as everywhere.

Bare URLs and email

https://…, http://…, www.… and email addresses are linked wherever they appear, even in the middle of a word. The details of where such a link stops matter more than they should, and match Obsidian:

A trailing " stays in the URL.
Trailing ?, !, ., ,, :, *, _, ~ do not.
An unbalanced ) does not.
Angle-bracket autolinks work with one-letter schemes: <a://b>.

HTML in notes

Raw HTML is parsed as Obsidian parses it, but not rendered — the tags show as literal text in reading view. The one place it has an effect is frontmatter sanitising, where a <script> is removed, unknown elements are unwrapped, and a raw <a> gains target and rel. Rendering HTML is a later phase.

Escaping

A backslash escapes a Markdown character: \*not italic\*. Inside a code span, a backslash is literal — notably \|, which stays \| in code even though it escapes a cell boundary in a table.

Internal links