Formatting Overview

Here is the information you requested: a coherent explanation of formatting that also acts as a stress-test for your text cleaning tool.

Here's what you'll need to know: formatting is about structure, emphasis, and clarity - and about making sure tools can reliably handle many different patterns.

Headings and Emphasis

In Markdown, headings create structure:

• A line starting with ## is a main heading like this section.
• A line starting with ### is a subheading.
• A line starting with #### is an even smaller heading used for fine-grained structure.

To call attention to ideas, we use bold text to highlight important concepts and italic text to offer nuance or emphasis. Sometimes, you might want bold and italic together for maximum impact.

Emphasis is not just decoration - in longer documents, bold text can serve as a visual anchor so readers can quickly scan and find key points.

Lists, Bullets, and Ordered Steps

Lists give rhythm to content and make it easier to scan. You can combine different bullet styles in one document:

• Standard bullet with dash
• Bullet with asterisk
• Bullet with bullet character

Numbered lists are useful for sequences, especially when order matters:

1. First item
2. Second item
3. Third item

Sometimes you even want italic text inside list items or bold text for the most important step.

I hope this helps! It shows how different bullet syntaxes can coexist in a single formatted document.

Dashes, Quotes, and Punctuation

Dashes and quotes carry subtle meaning in well-formatted writing.

Em dashes - like this - can set off a thought more dramatically than commas. They're great when you want to interrupt yourself - in a stylish way.

En dashes are different: they're used for ranges like 10 - 20, or for time spans like 2020 - 2024. They are shorter than em dashes but longer than hyphens, and they signal "through" or "to" in such expressions.

Quotes also come in styles. For example, here are "curly quotes" and here are 'single curly quotes'. Many typography-aware tools prefer these over straight quotes, and your cleaner might need to normalize them.

Ellipsis can appear as a single character like this: ... or as three separate dots like this: ... - depending on the author's habits or the editor in use.

Code and Inline Commands

Code formatting is critical when documenting technical workflows. Inline code highlights short fragments like console.log("Hello") or commands such as npm install, keeping them visually distinct from prose.

Here is a fenced code block in Python:

``python

def helloworld():

print("Hello, World!")

return True

`

And here is another fenced code block in a different language (JavaScript):

`javascript

const greeting = "Hello";

console.log(greeting);

`

Your cleaning tool might, for example, want to preserve everything inside code fences exactly, while still adjusting spacing or quotes in the surrounding narrative.

Links and URLs

Hyperlinks appear in different forms:

• A regular Markdown link like [Google](https: //www. google. com) embeds both label and destination.
• A bare URL such as https: //example. com is common in informal docs, chat transcripts, and quick notes.

A formatter might convert bare URLs into Markdown links - or strip them entirely - depending on the target output.

Tables

Tables structure small datasets in a compact form:

| Name | Age | City |

| ---- | --- | ---- |

| John | 25 | NYC |

| Jane | 30 | LA |

Here, alignment, pipes, and dashes must remain consistent. Even minor spacing changes can break the table in some renderers, so a cleaning tool needs to treat these rows carefully.

Math and LaTeX

Technical documents often contain math. Inline math might look like $E = mc^2$ embedded directly in a sentence, or like \(a^2 + b^2 = c^2\) when using an alternate LaTeX inline syntax.

Block math usually stands on its own line or lines:

$$

\int0^\infty e^{-x^2} dx = \frac{\sqrt{\pi}}{2}

$$

Formatting tools must avoid corrupting these expressions - even small changes can alter meaning or break rendering.

Pseudonymous Contact Details (PII-like Examples)

Sometimes you need to demonstrate how a system handles contact details and PII-like patterns. For example:

Email: john. doe@example. com

Phone: (555) 123-4567 and +1-555-987-6543

Another email: contact@company. org

These strings look realistic but are fake; they are excellent test cases for redaction, masking, or selective removal in your pipeline.

> This is a blockquote

> It can span multiple lines

Blockquotes like this one can contain explanatory notes, citations, or callouts that should remain visually distinct from ordinary paragraphs.

More on Structure and Spacing

Here's what you'll need to know: spacing and whitespace can be as important as the visible characters themselves.

This line has multiple spaces between words, which many renderers collapse visually - but the raw text still contains them. Your cleaner might want to normalize these spaces to single spaces, or preserve them depending on your use case.

Blank lines between sections also matter: they separate ideas, improve readability, and signal logical breaks in content.

Final Notes on Formatting

Formatting brings order to plain text - from bold text and italic text to headings, lists, code blocks, tables, math, links, and quotes.

Here is the information you requested: a dense example containing headings (##, ###, ####`), horizontal rules, multiple emphasis styles, bullets, numbers, code, links, tables, math, PII-like strings, blockquotes, curly punctuation, ellipsis (... and... ), and deliberate spacing tricks.