Formatting text

EtherPK notes are plain Markdown, so bold, italic and the rest are just characters around your words. You can type those characters yourself, or let the editor put them in for you.

Wrap what you have selected

Select a word or a phrase and press the character you want around it. The editor puts one on each side and keeps your text selected, so you can press again to add another layer:

Press	Once	Twice
*	*italic*	**bold**
_	_italic_	__bold__
[	[in brackets]	[[a link to a page]]
=		==highlighted==
~		~~struck through~~
`	`code`
(	(in parentheses)

Pressing [ twice is the quick way to link a word you have already written: the page list opens with that word as the search, and Enter finishes the link.

The markers go tightly around the words. If your selection has a space at either end, the space stays outside, so * around fox gives *fox* and it renders as it should.

With nothing selected these keys type as themselves. [ on its own is just [.

In a code block only [, ( and the backtick wrap, since * and _ mean something else in code. Nothing wraps in the frontmatter at the top of a page.

Keyboard shortcuts

Three shortcuts add or remove a mark in one go. On a Mac read Cmd for Ctrl.

Shortcut	Does
Ctrl+B	Bold the selection, or unbold it if it already is
Ctrl+I	Italic, the same way
Ctrl+Shift+H	Highlight, the same way

With nothing selected the shortcut opens an empty pair with the cursor inside, ready to type into. Type your words, press it once more and the cursor steps out past the closing markers so you carry on in plain text; press it on an empty pair and the pair goes away. The same three are on the / menu under Format. Inside a code block, or inline code between backticks, the shortcuts do nothing, since the marks would show as literal characters there.

What renders

Once your cursor leaves the line the markers fade out of view and the text shows styled: bold, italic, struck through, in a code font, or with a highlight wash behind it. Click back onto the line and the markers reappear so you can edit them. The characters are always there in the file, so a note reads the same in any other Markdown editor.

Highlight is ==text==, the spelling Obsidian and Logseq use, so notes moved between the three keep their highlights. If you import from Logseq, its older ^^text^^ form is converted for you.