Carve Syntax Quick Reference

Carve is a light markup language similar to Markdown but with cleaner, more consistent syntax. Its mnemonic: the markup looks like its output.

For comprehensive syntax documentation, see:

• Carve documentation - the canonical docs, including the cheat sheet and the formal grammar
• Coming from Markdown - task-oriented migration guide
• markup-carve/carve-php - the PHP implementation this package wraps

Key Differences from Markdown

If you're coming from Markdown, these are the main syntax changes:

Feature	Markdown	Carve
Italic	*text* or _text_	/text/
Bold	**text** or __text__	*text*
Bold italic	***text***	/*text*/
Underline	(not standard)	_text_
Strikethrough	~~text~~ (GFM)	~text~
Starting a list	may directly follow a paragraph	needs a blank line before the first item
Heading id	# Title {#id} (some flavors)	attribute line above the heading: {#id}
Table header	delimiter row |---|	|= header cells (delimiter row also accepted)

Fenced code blocks work exactly like Markdown: ```php with the language directly after the fence. (A space after the fence, the Djot style, is also accepted.)

The list rule deserves a callout: a - or 1. line directly after a paragraph line does not start a list - it folds into the paragraph. Add a blank line before the first item:

Some paragraph text.

- now this is a list
- second item

Quick Examples

Inline Formatting

/italic/
*bold*
/*bold italic*/
_underline_
~strikethrough~
{^superscript^}
{,subscript,}
=highlight=
`inline code`
{+inserted+}
{-deleted-}

The emphasis delimiters (/ * _ ~ =) work bare at word boundaries; use the brace form intraword. Superscript and subscript exist only in the brace form ({^...^} / {,...,}) - a bare ^ or , is always literal text, e.g. H{,2,}O.

Links and Images

[Link text](https://example.com)
![Alt text](image.png)
<https://example.com>

Lists

- Unordered item
- [ ] Task (unchecked)
- [x] Task (checked)

1. Ordered item

Code Blocks

```php
$code = 'example';
```

Attributes

Block attributes go on a standalone line before the block - including headings, where a trailing {...} is literal text:

{.warning}
This paragraph has a warning class.

{#custom-id}
# Heading

Divs and Admonitions

::: note
This is a note admonition.
:::

::: my-class
Any other name renders as a div with that class.
:::

Extensions

Beyond the core syntax, carve-php bundles optional extensions (mentions, wikilinks, table of contents, tabs, math, citations, and more). See the Extensions page for how to enable them in Laravel, and the feature tier overview in the canonical docs for what is core vs. opt-in.