# Allow URLs in posts to be escaped

**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/allow-urls-in-posts-to-be-escaped/188622
**Category:** Feature
**Created:** [April 30, 2021, 12:42am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/allow-urls-in-posts-to-be-escaped/188622 "2021-04-30T00:42:15Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![seanblue](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dc4da7/32.png) [@seanblue](https://meta.discourse.org/u/seanblue)
#### Post date: [April 30, 2021, 12:42am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/allow-urls-in-posts-to-be-escaped/188622/1 "2021-04-30T00:42:15Z")

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Some top level domains are automatically converted to URLs in posts, such as `.com`. Sometimes when you’re talking about a website, it makes sense to talk about it from a URL-perspective, not a company name perspective, but linkifying those doesn’t always make sense. In my case, I was comparing [amazon.com](http://amazon.com) and amazon.co.jp, so just saying “Amazon” at any point would have been ambiguous. But there’s no benefit to “[amazon.com](http://amazon.com)” being linkified in this case, and it’s also awkward in this exact situation because `.co.jp` isn’t automatically linkified, so it’s a mix of linkified and non-linkified website names in my text.

As far as I know, there is no way to avoid linkifying something like “[amazon.com](http://amazon.com)” while keeping it as normal text. Yes, I could make it `amazon.com`, but in a paragraph where I’m just talking about the website, it doesn’t really make sense to have random formatted text like that. Which brings me to my request. Could you make it so that if we escape the dot in the in the URL, it’s not converted to a link? Right now, `amazon\.com` still just renders as a linkified “[amazon.com](http://amazon.com)”, but it would be nice if it rendered a non-linkified version. That’s just what I consider the obvious solution. I’m open to other approaches as well, so long as I can get non-linkified URLs that aren’t formatted differently from regular text.

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### Author: ![codinghorror](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/codinghorror/32/110067_2.png) [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [May 3, 2021, 4:54am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/allow-urls-in-posts-to-be-escaped/188622/2 "2021-05-03T04:54:49Z")

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The other non-standard solutions are to use odd unicode characters (non-visible spaces) to break the detection.

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### Author: ![seanblue](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dc4da7/32.png) [@seanblue](https://meta.discourse.org/u/seanblue)
#### Post date: [May 3, 2021, 2:50pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/allow-urls-in-posts-to-be-escaped/188622/3 "2021-05-03T14:50:13Z")

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Kind of an awkward workaround, but better than nothing I guess. Any chance my suggestion will be considered? It seems much more “standard” to use a backslash for this kind of thing.
