Re: How to escape an asterisk on org-mode

[Albert Krewinkel <tarleb@moltkeplatz.de>]

Hi James,

James Ryland Miller <james.ryland.miller@gmail.com> writes:
> I'm trying to escape an asterisk character, i.e. "*" to use in regular
> text. I.e., "The person wanted to say *BSD". And I don't want to use a
> verbatim or code block because monospace is not what I need.
>
> I've tried \* to escape the character and it doesn't work. I'm on Org 8.2.5h.

There is currently no way to escape characters in this way.  Using an
asterisk like in your example should work fine -- except if the text
after it makes it seem like the asterisk is actually markup. (e.g.
"The person wanted to say *BSD.  Now this is bold*"

Whether an asterisk is treated as a symbol or as markup follows some
rather complicated rules, but there are two simple rules that make the
behavior predictable:

1. Asterisks intended for markup must occur right before and after the
   words that are to be printed in bold, i.e. *this is bold*, but
   * neither this* is,  *nor this *.

2. Markup cannot span more than two lines:
   *this
   is not
   bold*

HTH

Albert



-- 
Albert Krewinkel
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