Text formatting

Emphasis is written with apostrophe markup (the wikitext convention), and you can drop down to a set of allowed inline HTML tags for anything apostrophes don't cover.

Bold and italic

You type	You get
''italic''	italic
'''bold'''	bold
'''''bold italic'''''	bold italic

Under the hood these become <i>, <b>, and <b><i> — plain HTML emphasis, not <em>/<strong>.

Processed per line

Apostrophe markup is resolved one line at a time — an opening ''' will not pair with a closing ''' on a later line. Keep each bold/italic span on a single line.

What about four or more apostrophes?

HonoWiki follows MediaWiki's doQuotes rules. A run of four apostrophes renders a literal ' followed by bold (''''x'''' → 'x'); five is bold and italic; more than five spill out as literal apostrophes. You'll rarely need this — reach for <nowiki> (below) if you want literal apostrophes.

Horizontal rule

Four or more dashes on their own line make a divider:

----

renders a horizontal rule (<hr>).

Inline HTML formatting

When apostrophes aren't enough, these inline tags are allowed and render directly:

You type	You get
H<sub>2</sub>O	H2O
x<sup>2</sup>	x2
<code>inline code</code>	inline code
<kbd>Ctrl</kbd> + <kbd>C</kbd>	Ctrl + C
<mark>highlighted</mark>	highlighted
<small>small print</small>	small print
<del>removed</del> <ins>added</ins>	removed added
<u>underline</u> and <s>strikethrough</s>	underline and strikethrough
<abbr title="HyperText Markup Language">HTML</abbr>	HTML

Other allowed inline tags include <em>, <strong>, <big>, <tt>, <samp>, <var>, <cite>, <q>, <dfn>, <bdi>, <bdo>, and <ruby>. Only allowlisted tags render — anything else is shown as literal text, not executed. See the full allowed-tags list.

Escaping markup

To show apostrophes, angle brackets, or anything else literally — without it being interpreted — wrap it in <nowiki>:

<nowiki>'''this stays as apostrophes''' and <this> stays literal</nowiki>

See Code, pre & math for <nowiki>, <pre>, and code blocks.