Text Formatting

Style your text with bold, italic, underline, headings, and lists — all using simple symbols you type directly in Contentful.

Syntax

Examples

Bold and italic

Type this in Contentful:

This is **very important** and this is *slightly important*.

What you’ll see: The words “very important” appear bold (heavier, darker text) and “slightly important” appears in italics (tilted text).

Underline

Type this in Contentful:

Please read the ++terms and conditions++ before signing.

What you’ll see: “terms and conditions” appears with an underline beneath it.

Headings

Type this in Contentful:

# Main Title

## Section Title

### Subsection Title

What you’ll see: Three lines of text at different sizes — the # heading is the largest, ## is medium-sized, ### is smaller. Each heading has more spacing below it.

Bullet list

Type this in Contentful:

- First item
- Second item
- Third item

What you’ll see: A bulleted list with three items, each with a dot (•) to the left.

Numbered list

Type this in Contentful:

1. Step one
2. Step two
3. Step three

What you’ll see: A numbered list starting at 1. The numbers appear automatically — you don’t have to get them right, but it’s clearer to write them in order.

Tips

• You can combine bold and italic: ***very important*** makes text bold AND italic at the same time.
• Put a blank line between a heading and the paragraph that follows it to make sure it renders correctly.

Common Mistakes

Forgetting the closing symbols

Wrong: **this is bold Right: **this is bold**

You must open AND close every style marker. Forgetting the closing **, *, or ++ will break the formatting for the rest of the paragraph.

Adding a space inside the markers

Wrong: ** bold text ** Right: **bold text**

The ** must touch the word directly — no space between the marker and the text.

No blank line before a heading

Wrong:

Some paragraph text.
## My Heading

Right:

Some paragraph text.

## My Heading

Headings need a blank line above them to display correctly.