# Trimming elides markdown format
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/trimming-elides-markdown-format/226131
**Category:** Bug
**Created:** [May 4, 2022, 4:39pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/trimming-elides-markdown-format/226131 "2022-05-04T16:39:44Z")
**Posts on this page:** 7
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@artur](https://meta.discourse.org/u/artur)
#### Post date: [May 4, 2022, 4:39pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/trimming-elides-markdown-format/226131/1 "2022-05-04T16:39:44Z")
We encounter an issue when email contain hyphens underlining a line, which markdown recognises as a heading. This is trimmed away by the trim algo. We have to always show the trimmed content since many people use our instance by email only.
# Steps to reproduce:
Basically in the Advanced Email test enter:
```plaintext
This is text before
Header
------
This is text after
```
Which in markdown would be rendered as:
> This is text before
>
> ## Header
>
> This is text after
The result is that the text before the header is removed and after is elided!
Is there a way to adjust the trimming to not elide lines of hyphens that follows a line with the same number of characters? At least markdown seems to be able to deal with that.
–
I’m on
2.9.0.beta4
([14f61c5784](https://github.com/discourse/discourse/commits/14f61c57847b6d0a861653e2f479947ad9b68962))
---
### Author:  [@Falco](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Falco)
#### Post date: [May 4, 2022, 4:40pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/trimming-elides-markdown-format/226131/2 "2022-05-04T16:40:45Z")
Have you tried disabling the setting `trim incoming emails` ?
---
### Author:  [@artur](https://meta.discourse.org/u/artur)
#### Post date: [May 4, 2022, 4:45pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/trimming-elides-markdown-format/226131/3 "2022-05-04T16:45:31Z")
Yes of course disabling the trimming does not elide the next 🙂
However, the problem then comes when people reply to a very very long email thread via email and then all that thread is shown the web view. That is not nice. Hence I would like to re-enable the trimming!
---
### Author:  [@Falco](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Falco)
#### Post date: [May 4, 2022, 5:31pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/trimming-elides-markdown-format/226131/4 "2022-05-04T17:31:11Z")
So you want the trim feature enable but the `-----` signature removal feature? That’s tricky. Can users be told to use [ATX headings](https://spec.commonmark.org/0.30/#atx-headings) instead of [Setext headings](https://spec.commonmark.org/0.30/#setext-headings)?
---
### Author:  [@ThiefMaster](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ThiefMaster)
#### Post date: [May 5, 2022, 9:04am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/trimming-elides-markdown-format/226131/5 "2022-05-05T09:04:15Z")
As the lead developer of the application that creates the emails @artur talks about: Yes, we could change it (or use `^^^^` instead of `----` in the “underline”), but this is technically not markdown but simply a text/plain email that’s formatted in a “nice” way for humans. And the “underlined” headings do look a bit nicer IMHO than using markdown-style `# something` headings
Anyway, don’t email signatures that are delimited with `--` usually have a blank line right before the `--` line? So maybe that could be taken into account when parsing emails?
---
### Author:  [@Falco](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Falco)
#### Post date: [May 5, 2022, 1:00pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/trimming-elides-markdown-format/226131/6 "2022-05-05T13:00:14Z")
> [@ThiefMaster](#):
>
> Anyway, don’t email signatures that are delimited with `--` usually have a blank line right before the `--` line? So maybe that could be taken into account when parsing emails?
I think thats handled here
>
If you want to propose a PR we can take a look at it. It’s a tricky area, as regressions are very visible.
---
### Author:  [@artur](https://meta.discourse.org/u/artur)
#### Post date: [May 20, 2022, 1:45pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/trimming-elides-markdown-format/226131/7 "2022-05-20T13:45:10Z")
I just tested that using a mix of characters i.e. `-=-=-=-=` ~~does not~~ does get trimmed away.
Seems one should just use characters which are not in the delimiter list…