How do you make bold text on Reddit?

Wrap the words in double asterisks and Reddit renders them bold. A single asterisk on each side makes italic instead. Reddit uses standard markdown here, unlike Slack and WhatsApp, which bold with a single asterisk.

How do spoiler tags work on Reddit?

Put the text between a greater-than-bang and a bang-less-than, so it reads as an exclamation mark hugging your words inside those angle markers. Reddit hides it behind a click-to-reveal blur in both posts and comments.

What is the difference between fancy pants and Markdown Mode?

New Reddit defaults to a WYSIWYG editor nicknamed fancy pants, which often mangles pasted markdown. Every post and comment box has a toggle to Markdown Mode, where raw markdown renders predictably. Old Reddit uses markdown by default, so no switch is needed there.

Can you make tables on Reddit?

Yes. Reddit supports pipe-delimited markdown tables with a header row, a divider row of dashes, and one row per line. They render in Markdown Mode and on old Reddit, though not every mobile app displays them well.

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Reddit markdown guide: formatting, spoilers & tables

Reddit runs on markdown, and it is closer to the standard flavor than any chat app. Bold is two asterisks, italic is one, and links use the familiar bracket-and-parenthesis form. That makes Reddit a relief after Slack or WhatsApp, with two twists worth knowing: the spoiler and table syntax that are unique to Reddit, and the new-Reddit editor that quietly fights your pasted markup. This is the full reference.

Fancy pants vs. Markdown Mode

New Reddit's post and comment boxes default to a WYSIWYG editor nicknamed "fancy pants." It is pleasant for typing from scratch, but it fights you when you paste raw markdown: symbols get half-applied or mangled, and text drafted in an AI tool drags in invisible characters that wreck spacing. Every box has a toggle to switch to Markdown Mode, where the raw syntax renders predictably. Old Reddit uses markdown by default, so nothing needs switching there. If your markdown is not rendering, the first thing to check is whether you are still in fancy pants.

The full Reddit markdown syntax

Here is every style Reddit understands, with the exact characters to type:

Bold — **text** (two asterisks)
Italic — *text* (one asterisk, or _text_)
Bold italic — ***text***
Strikethrough — ~~text~~ (two tildes)
Headings — # Heading on its own line, down through ######
Block quote — > quoted line at the start of a line
Link — [visible text](https://example.com)
Spoiler — `>!hidden!<` wrapping the hidden words
Inline code — `code` (single backticks)
Code block — three backticks on their own line before and after
Bulleted list — - item
Numbered list — 1. item

What Reddit does not have is underline. There is no symbol for it, so an underlined heading pasted from a document simply loses that styling. Reach for bold or italic instead.

Bold, italic, headings, and quotes

Because Reddit follows standard markdown, the asterisk rules nest the way you would expect: *one* is italic, **two** is bold, ***three*** is bold italic. This is the opposite of the single-asterisk trap in Slack and WhatsApp, so a message copied from those apps needs its bold markers doubled to survive on Reddit.

Headings run from # for the largest down to six hashes for the smallest, each on its own line. Quotes use a leading > , and they nest, so a reply to a quote can sit one level deeper. Links are fully supported in normal posts and comments, so the [text](url) form works everywhere here, unlike Discord, where masked links only render inside bot embeds.

Spoilers and lists

Reddit's spoiler syntax is its own. You wrap the hidden text so it reads as `>!the killer was the butler!<` and Reddit blurs it until a reader clicks. It works inline mid-sentence or around a whole block, and it functions in both posts and comments. Use it only around genuine plot points so readers trust the blur.

Lists behave like standard markdown: start lines with - for bullets or 1. for numbers, and indent with spaces to nest sub-items. Reddit auto-numbers, so you can leave every line as 1. and it counts up on its own.

Tables on Reddit

Reddit supports markdown tables, which many people do not realize. A table is built from pipe-delimited rows: a header row, a divider row of dashes that sets column alignment, and one line per data row. A header line looks like `Feature | Free | Pro`, the divider beneath it looks like `--- | --- | ---`, and each following row uses the same pipe layout. Reddit draws the grid in Markdown Mode and on old Reddit. Keep tables narrow, because not every mobile app renders them cleanly, and a three-column table is far more readable on a phone than a six-column one.

Skip the syntax and let a tool build it

If you would rather not hand-type spoilers, pipes, and dividers, the Reddit text formatter gives you a visual editor: write or paste your post, click the styles you want, and Copy hands you clean Reddit markdown ready for Markdown Mode or old Reddit. It also strips the invisible characters that make AI-drafted posts look machine-written, which matters even more on Reddit than elsewhere.

On the subject of hidden characters, zero-width spaces and stray Unicode are a common reason a pasted Reddit post has weird gaps or a mangled table. The guide to removing invisible characters explains where they come from and how to strip them in one pass.

Formatting for other communities

Reddit is one dialect among many. If you cross-post to a server, the Discord text formatter switches to Discord's markup, which shares Reddit's double-asterisk bold and ~~strike~~ but hides links unless they sit in an embed and uses double pipes for spoilers instead of the bang syntax. The Discord text formatting guide is the full companion reference for that platform.

Learn Reddit's handful of unique marks, keep an eye on which editor mode you are in, and your posts will render exactly as you wrote them.