← Overview

LaTeX reserves a handful of characters for its own use. Obsitex escapes them for you, so you can just type naturally.

Characters that are escaped automatically

In normal text, the LaTeX special characters % & $ # _ ~ ^ < > { } \ are escaped for you — write them as you would anywhere else:

Characters like 5 % off, A & B, a #tag, snake_case, a tilde ~ and a caret ^ are escaped automatically.

A price of $10 is escaped too.

Characters like 5 \% off, A \& B, a \#tag, snake\_case, a tilde \textasciitilde{} and a caret \textasciicircum{} are escaped automatically.

A price of \$10 is escaped too.

Showing a Markdown character literally

To make a Markdown character appear as itself instead of triggering formatting, put a backslash in front of it:

To show a literal asterisk write \* and for a literal underscore write \_.

To show a literal asterisk write * and for a literal underscore write \_.

Horizontal rule vs. dashes

A line made only of ---, *** or ___ becomes a horizontal rule. Three hyphens inside a sentence stay an em-dash (—); two become an en-dash (–).

A horizontal rule on its own line:

---

An em-dash --- in a sentence stays an em-dash.

\noindent\rule{\linewidth}{0.4pt}

An em-dash --- in a sentence stays an em-dash.

Tips & pitfalls

• A single $ in a paragraph is escaped to \$. But an unescaped pair of $ in the same paragraph is read as inline math — if you mean two literal dollar amounts, write \$ for each.
• Inside a single-backtick span nothing is escaped (it is raw LaTeX, not monospace) — see Text formatting.
• To prevent a stand-alone --- from becoming a rule, escape it: \---.