Formatting & Markdown Guide

Annotations and song pages can be stylized with Markdown and HTML formatting. This page is not meant to be a comprehensive list of all formatting techniques, but it does contain the most important ones. We try to keep all of the formatting on the site as uniform as possible, so if it's not on the list, don't use it in an annotation.

Formatting Annotations

Annotations should always be formatted with Markdown. Annotations can become difficult to edit if they're stylized with HTML instead of Markdown. The annotations below contain the most important formatting techniques and examples of how to properly use them:

• Italics
• Bold
• Block quotes and quotation marks
• Links
• Images
• Image captions
• Videos
• Dashes
• Escape Markdown characters: \ ` * _ { } [ ] < > ( ) # + - . ! |

Note: Remember that trying to mix HTML and Markdown in the same paragraph will sometimes break formatting.

If you’re looking for general information about how to annotate, take a look at our guide, "How to Annotate and Edit on Genius."

Formatting Lyrics

Song pages don’t require too much HTML knowledge, but there are a few instances where you'll need to add a little formatting:

• Italics and bold
• Extending/Moving Annotations

For an in-depth look at transcribing take a look at our guide, “How to Add Songs to Genius”

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Global Formatting

Lyrics, texts and annotations can make use of some basic HTML tags and Markdown for additional formatting, listed below.

• Headings
• Numbered lists
• Bullet lists
• Horizontal line
• Crossed out (strikethrough) text
• Subscripts and superscripts
• Code block
• Plain text

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Miscellaneous

Due to technical limitations, you may notice that it is impossible to use the characters < and > in song and album titles. Because of that, you must use the substitute characters ˂ and ˃ instead.