GUIDE 3 — TEXT FORMATTING

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formatting operators

comparison

marktxt

;^ bold ;.
;% italic ;.
;` code ;.
;\st strikethrough ;.

markdown

**bold**
*italic*
`code`
~~strikethrough~~

html

<strong>bold</strong>
<em>italic</em>
<code>code</code>
<del>strikethrough</del>

inline mixing

all formatting works inline within plain text:

this is bold and this is italic and code too.

you can nest them: bold with code inside

this is ;^ bold ;. and this is ;% italic ;. and ;` code ;. too.
you can nest them: ;^ bold with ;` code ;. inside ;.

why it matters

no character conflicts

markdown uses * for bold and italic — the same character used in shell globs,
multiplication, pointer syntax, and regex wildcards.

markdown uses _ for italic — the same character used in variable_names,
file_paths, constant_values, and snake_case everywhere.

marktxt uses ;` and ;` — characters that don't appear in code or prose.

explicit closers

markdown bold: **where does this end** or here**
marktxt bold: where does this end — the ;. closer is unambiguous.

code blocks

marktxt

;' (open with semicolon-quote)
your code here
;. (close with semicolon-dot)

everything between ;' and ;. is literal — no parsing inside.

markdown

``` (open with triple backtick)
your code here
``` (close with triple backtick)

html

<pre><code>
your code here
</code></pre>

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