# Very important (not really) markdown special-handling case: the shruggy

**URL:** <https://meta.discourse.org/t/very-important-not-really-markdown-special-handling-case-the-shruggy/187415>\
**Category:** Feature\
**Created:** [April 19, 2021, 11:41pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/very-important-not-really-markdown-special-handling-case-the-shruggy/187415 "2021-04-19T23:41:03Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 1

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**Author:** ![mattdm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/mattdm/32/216484_2.png) [@mattdm](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mattdm)\
**Post date:** [April 19, 2021, 11:41pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/very-important-not-really-markdown-special-handling-case-the-shruggy/187415/1 "2021-04-19T23:41:04Z")

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So there’s this little internet chat expression: `¯\_(ツ)_/¯` – the classic “shruggy”.

Tragically, Discourse’s markdown sees the first \ as an escape, and we get

¯\_(ツ)\_/¯

**A MISSING ARM**.

_Poor shruggy!_

Now I know that I can mis-use `` as I did above, or throw in a couple of extra escapes

`¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯` → ¯\_(ツ)\_/¯

but people replying via email will not necessarily know to do this – and those _getting_ the message via email will also not have the escapes rendered.

I’m sure there are many more important things, but … maybe there could be a special case? ¯\_(ツ)\_/¯

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_[View the full topic](https://meta.discourse.org/t/very-important-not-really-markdown-special-handling-case-the-shruggy/187415)._