Text and formatting

The prose layer is deliberately small. Everything structural is a directive.

Headings

# Title
## Section
### Subsection

One to six # characters followed by a space. A renderer gives each heading an anchor derived from its text, so sections can be linked directly — the contents list on this page is built from them.

Paragraphs

Consecutive lines separated by a blank line. A single newline inside a paragraph is a soft wrap, not a break, so you can wrap your source at whatever column you like without changing the output.

This sentence and the one after it
are the same paragraph.

This is a new one.

Quotes

> Something worth quoting.

Lists

- one
- two
* also a bullet

1. first
2. second

note

Title: Lists do not nest Indenting an item deeper than the first does not create a sublist. XTXT reports a warning there rather than flattening it silently, so a formatting mistake cannot quietly destroy your structure. This is the format's biggest limitation and is covered on the Limitations page.

Checklists

An unordered item whose text begins with [ ] or [x]:

- [ ] not done yet
- [x] done

These are picked up by xtxt extract as tasks alongside @task blocks, so a casual checklist and a formal record both reach a program.

Inline marks

Write	Get
`emphasis`	emphasis
`strong`	strong
`code`	`code`
`~~strike~~`	~~strike~~
`[text](url)`	a link

Escaping

A backslash makes the next character literal:

\*not emphasis\*

Footnotes

Parsing is a single pass[^why].

@footnote(id="why")
Nothing nests, so no backtracking is needed.
@endfootnote

A reference to an id with no footnote, and a footnote nothing references, are both warnings.