How to manage this? The Preview shown is different from the Output. there are editing symbols (ie: ' * ' - stars used for bold,italics..) seen after posting

This is the preview while am posting answer
My Computer

But this is the Output
https://socratic.org/s/aJLExKNX

1 Answer
Oct 7, 2017

The error is caused by the consecutive #"*"# characters.

Explanation:

As a rule of thumb, try to avoid using multiple #"*"# characters one after the other and with spaces in between groups because it will cause a formatting error.

In this particular case, you left a space before the last #"*"# character added to the "For the sake of simplicity..." part. This works in the preview, but it does not carry over once you post the answer.

Moreover, having three consecutive #"*"# characters can cause this error sometimes--I don't exactly how that works, but I know that it does happen.

So if you want to write bold + italic text, you should use the underscore character instead #-># see this answer for more info on how that works.

You can also use a combination of #"_"# and #"*"# characters to get bold + italic text.

For example, you can have

  • Italic text with some bold text mixed in
  • Bold text with some italic text mixed in

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