Discord Markdown Cheat Sheet: Ultimate Text Formatting Guide (2026)

The Challenge of Formatting Messages on Discord

Have you ever seen a Discord message with giant headers, tiny footnotes, or structured bulleted lists and wondered how they did it? Discord uses a customized version of Markdown to render text on its apps. In recent updates, Discord expanded its syntax to support modern layout tools like headings, list indentation, and subtext formatting. Learning how to format text on discord lets you build cleaner, more readable announcements.

Using our free online Discord Markdown Previewer, you can test and preview all these styles in real time before sending them to your server.

Discord Markdown Quick Cheat Sheet

Headers, Subtext, and Indented Lists

Create visual headings by starting a line with hashtags (## Heading, ### Subheading). Make sure to include a space after the hashtag. For indented bullet lists, add two spaces before the hyphen ( - indented item) to create sub-lists with shifting bullet shapes.