Research / Constructs / Inline formatting
Bold, italic, and strikethrough in five publishing editors
One Markdown fixture, five real publishing editors, tested 2026-08-24. For inline formatting the observed result was degraded in X and LinkedIn; kept in WordPress, Substack, and Beehiiv. Every row below is a rule with its own page and its own dated record.
Matches strong, emphasis, strikethrough. Fixture markdown-portability-test-v1. Tested 2026-08-24. How these tests are run.
What happens, per destination
| Destination | What happens | Result | Severity | Rule | Confidence | Last tested |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| X | Bold, italic, and strike are removed. | Degraded | Review | X-EMPH-01 | Verified | 2026-08-24 |
| Bold, italic, and strike are removed. | Degraded | Review | LI-EMPH-01 | Verified | 2026-08-24 | |
| WordPress | Inline formatting is preserved. | Kept | Info | WP-EMPH-01 | Verified | 2026-08-24 |
| Substack | Inline formatting survives rich paste. | Kept | Info | SUB-EMPH-01 | Verified | 2026-08-24 |
| Beehiiv | Inline formatting is kept as Markdown. | Kept | Info | BEE-EMPH-01 | Verified | 2026-08-24 |
Manual steps this creates
- X: Carry the emphasis with wording or placement instead. (The composer exposes no formatting controls, and Unicode look-alike fonts hurt screen readers and search.)
Limits of what was tested
- Each result describes the surface named beside it, on the date named beside it, and nothing wider.
- A result marked unknown means no dated test covers it. It is not a prediction.
- Rendering is not the same across platform versions, themes, plugins, or email clients.
Prepare a draft
- Check your own draft against all five destinations
- Markdown to WordPress, handoff mode: gutenberg paste
- Markdown to Substack, handoff mode: rich html clipboard
- Markdown to Beehiiv, handoff mode: clean markdown paste
- Markdown to X, handoff mode: plain text
- Markdown to LinkedIn, handoff mode: plain text
Related
- The 5 rules behind this page:
BEE-EMPH-01,LI-EMPH-01,SUB-EMPH-01,WP-EMPH-01,X-EMPH-01 - Every construct, side by side
- The full five-destination matrix