Markdown

Learn how Vale handles Markdown content.

GitHub-Flavored Markdown support is built in. The supported extensions are .md, .mdown, .markdown, and .markdn.

By default, Vale ignores:

• Indented blocks: Blocks starting with four or more spaces.
• Fenced blocks: Blocks surrounded by three or more backticks.
• Code spans: Text surrounded by backticks.
• Math: $$…$$ blocks and $x^2$ spans. See Math.
• URLs: See URL handling for more information.

Math

Both $$…$$ display math and $x^2$ inline math are ignored. Inline math follows Pandoc's delimiter rules, which are what tell an equation from a price: the opening $ needs a non-space character to its right, and the closing $ needs one to its left and no digit after it. So $g_i = g(p)_i$ is math, while It costs $5 and $10 stays prose and is linted as such.

A span may wrap onto the next line, but not past the end of its paragraph. Write \$ for a literal dollar sign that would otherwise open one.

R Markdown

Requires Vale v3.18.0 or later. Earlier versions can assign the format instead: Rmd = md under [formats].

R Markdown (.Rmd, .rmd) is linted as Markdown. Its knitr syntax is code to Vale:

• Chunks are fenced blocks—the chunk options in the {r ...} info string and everything inside the fence are ignored.
• Inline expressions such as `r nrow(df)` are code spans, and are ignored by default.

A configuration section still needs to match the extension:

[*.{md,Rmd}]
BasedOnStyles = Vale

Pandoc syntax that isn't Markdown—citations, for one—can be excluded with TokenIgnores:

[*.{md,Rmd}]
TokenIgnores = (\[@[^\n\]]+\])

Comments

Vale supports comment-based configuration in Markdown files:

• Turn Vale off entirely:

<!-- vale off -->

This text will be ignored.

<!-- vale on -->

• Turn off a specific rule:

<!-- vale Style.Redundancy = NO -->

This is some text ACT test

<!-- vale Style.Redundancy = YES -->

• Turn off specific match(es) within a rule:

<!-- vale Style.Redundancy["ACT test","OTHER"] = NO -->

This is some text ACT test

<!-- vale Style.Redundancy["ACT test","OTHER"] = YES -->

• Turn on or off specific styles:

<!-- vale StyleName1 = YES -->
<!-- vale StyleName2 = NO -->

• Set styles (enabling them and switching off any other styles):

<!-- vale style = StyleName1 -->
<!-- vale styles = StyleName1, StyleName2 -->