3.18 Summary of Special Characters and Their Meaning

PlainDoc works by giving some punctuation and special characters special meaning. Usually these characters work in the normal way unless used in special context. Generally you should not worry about them too much when editing documents, but if output shows that PlainDoc has indeed confused a punctuation character used in plain meaning with the special meaning, you may need to take some steps to disambiguate the meaning. Often this involves adding whitespace or some rearrangement, but in extreme cases you may need to recourse to some special PlainDoc syntax or LaTeX syntax.

  !  -- No special meaning, reserved for punctuation in content
  ! ! -- Macro variable expansion (bangbang) (see <<define: var: value>>)
  "just textual quoting"  -- no special meaning, but LaTeX will apply typographer's quotes
  #  -- doc title underline, often comment in programming
  $\gamma$                -- TeX math mode
  %  -- TeX comment character
  &
  '  -- No special meaning, reserved for punctuation in content.
  (  -- causes preceding word (without space) to be considered a function name
  )  -- No special meaning, reserved for punctuation in content.
  *emph*   -- Bold emphasis
  * bullet -- On left edge introduces a bulleted list item
  +italic+ -- Italic emphasis
  + bullet -- On left edge introduces a bulleted list item
  ,  -- No special meaning, used for punctuation in content.
  - bullet -- On left edge introduces a bulleted list item, section underline
  .  -- No special meaning, used for punctuation in content.
  /
  term:: definition  -- Introduce definition list items
  ;  -- No special meaning, used for punctuation in content.
  << -- Starts PlainDoc tag
  <  -- Starts highlighting text as XML tag. Usually this means computer output
  =  -- Chapter title underline
  >  -- Ends XML tag highlight
  >> -- Ends PlainDoc tag
  ?  -- No special meaning, reserved for punctuation in content.
  @  -- No special meaning, but often indicates an email address
  [Reference]  -- Also used in TeX macros for optional args
  \  -- Invoke TeX macro, e.g. \newpage or \foo[optarg]{arg1}{arg2}
  ^  -- TeX math superscript, e.g. $E=mc^2$; subsubsection underline
  _  -- TeX math subscript,   e.g. $H_2O$ or $H_{ref}$
  `
  {arg} -- TeX macro argument grouping
  |
  ~teletype~  -- Teletype emphasis, use for "computer text" like
                 variable names, etc. Also subsection underline.