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Creating and highlighting code blocks
In this article
Share samples of code with fenced code blocks and enabling syntax highlighting.
Fenced code blocks
You can create fenced code blocks by placing triple backticks ``` before and after the code block. We recommend placing a blank line before and after code blocks to make the raw formatting easier to read.
```
function test() {
console.log("notice the blank line before this function?");
}
```
Tip: To preserve your formatting within a list, make sure to indent non-fenced code blocks by eight spaces.
To display triple backticks in a fenced code block, wrap them inside quadruple backticks.
```` ``` Look! You can see my backticks. ``` ````
👁 Rendered fenced code with backticks block
Syntax highlighting
You can add an optional language identifier to enable syntax highlighting in your fenced code block.
For example, to syntax highlight Ruby code:
```ruby
require 'redcarpet'
markdown = Redcarpet.new("Hello World!")
puts markdown.to_html
```
👁 Rendered code block with Ruby syntax highlighting
We use Linguist to perform language detection and to select third-party grammars for syntax highlighting. You can find out which keywords are valid in the languages YAML file.