Telegram markdown syntax: Bold *and* italic? (September 2018)

Question

By looking at Telegram’s “Markdown Syntax” Wiki page, it should be relatively easy to create text that is bold and italic.

There, it says that

*this is in italic* and _so is this_

**this is in bold** and __so is this__

***this is bold and italic*** and ___so is this___

results in

this is in italic and so is this

this is in bold and so is this

this is bold and italic and so is this

.

But using

***this is bold and italic***

results in

*this is bold an italic*

and

___this is bold and italic___

results in

_this is bold an italic_

.

That is: Telegram’s markdown interpretation must have changed.

When programming a Telegram bot, it is possible to use HTML instead of markdown, but I would like to simply write some bold and italic text to my friends while regularly chatting with them.

Using the markdown syntax that is used here does not work. I already tried it.

Plumbago

Are you asking in the perspective of a user or a developer? The statement "I would like to simply write some bold and italic text to my friends while regularly chatting with them" seems to suggest the former. That makes this question off-topic for Stack Overflow. – Gnathic

I am asking this from the perspective of a user. If this is off-topic for Stack Overflow, where shall I post it? Superuser.com? – Plumbago

This is standard Markdown behavior. It would appear you found a bug in that Markdown implementation. I would suggest filing a bug report with the developers. As a workaround, you might try mixing the asterisks and underscore syntax and see if that works: __*this is bold and italic*__ or **_this is bold and italic_**. – Allanson

These implementations do not work as well. I think I will contact the Telegram people. – Plumbago

For posterity: The linked page in the OP is not Telegram's Markdown docs, it's the Markdown docs for the Sourceforge Wiki. Also Telegram sources are not on SourceForge, they're on github: telegram.org/apps#source-code – Verne

That is Sourceforge’s markdown syntax – Mitzvah

Answer 1

You can highlight the text and then press the three-dot button in the upper right corner. It will present you with a choice of formatting options. Do it twice and first choose one formatting and then the other. The text will be bold and italic as a result.

Raid

That’s at least a good solution that works. Thanks. But Telegram did not do a very good job. It is still not displayed properly when looking at the web app and a proper markdown syntax is still missing. – Plumbago

Answer 2

That Wiki page is outdated. Telegram accepts standard Markdown text formatting:

• Bold: Double * = **hello world**
• Italic: Double _ = __hello world__
• Monospace: Triple ` = ```hello world```

Bureaucratic

Strike through: Double ~ = ~~hello world~~; Also you can use oneline monospace by using a single backquote. – Hamartia