Markup syntax reference

Markup is the BBCode-style mini-language used by AnsiConsole.Markup, AnsiConsole.MarkupLine, Widgets.Markup, and any widget that accepts a markup string (panel headers, table cells, tree node labels, etc.).

Basic syntax

[<style>]<text>[/]

<style> is a space-separated list of style tokens. <text> is the styled content. The closing [/] reverts to the surrounding style. Tags nest; the closing [/] always closes the most recent open tag.

[red]hello[/]                              red
[red bold]hello[/]                         red and bold
[red on yellow]hello[/]                    red on yellow background
[bold]b[red]r[/]b[/]                       'b' bold, 'r' bold-red, last 'b' bold

Style tokens

Token	Effect
red, blue, green, ...	Named foreground colour. See colours reference.
on yellow	Background colour.
#ff8800	Hex foreground colour.
#ff8800 on #1e90ff	Hex foreground + background.
bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, dim, invert, conceal, slowblink, rapidblink	Decorations.

Mix freely:

[bold red on #ffe4b5]important[/]
[#ff8800 italic]warm[/]

Hyperlinks

[link=URL]text[/] emits an OSC 8 hyperlink. Modern terminals (Windows Terminal, iTerm2, GNOME Terminal, ConEmu) make the wrapped text clickable.

Visit [link=https://example.com]our site[/].

If the URL itself is the visible text, omit the value:

[link]https://example.com[/]

Emoji shortcodes

:name: substitutes a unicode emoji glyph at parse time:

:rocket:     -> 🚀
:check_mark_button:  -> ✅
:warning:    -> ⚠️

See emoji reference for the list.

Escapes

Use [[ for a literal [, and ]] for a literal ]:

[[escaped]]    -> [escaped]

Inside a tag body, an unescaped ] is a parse error.

For arbitrary text that might contain [, use AnsiConsole.EscapeMarkup:

AnsiConsole.MarkupLine('Got input: [yellow]%s[/]',
                        [AnsiConsole.EscapeMarkup(userInput)]);

Errors

The parser raises EMarkupParseError (defined in VSoft.AnsiConsole.Markup.Tokenizer) on:

• Unterminated tag (missing ]).
• Unescaped ] inside a tag body.
• Stack underflow (closing [/] with no matching open tag).

See also

• Markup widget — the renderable form.
• Colours — named colour list.
• Styles — when to use TAnsiStyle vs markup.
• Emoji — full shortcode catalogue.