this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2025
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Which is the correct way to create bullet points in Markdown — using space+hyphen or tab+hyphen ?

- first level bullet point
 - space+hyphen 
- first level bullet point
    - tab+hyphen 
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[–] boatswain 6 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I believe either will work, so your call. If you really want to spark a tabs vs spaces holy war, I'll throw my vote in for tabs: they're semantic, whereas spaces are not--the meaning of a tab is "this is one level of indentation". Using spaces for indentation is like using <span class="italic"> instead of <i> for italics.

thanksalot! I guess I will stick with tab then

[–] gumnos@mastodon.bsd.cafe 3 points 1 day ago

@boatswain

Seconding the semantic nature of tabs (have your $EDITOR display a literal tab as anything from 1 to N spaces), but I'm stuck in a world where Python standardized on 4-space indentation, so the ol' "When in Rome" adage applies. :sigh:

@happeningtofry99158

[–] korthrun@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

In the great tabs v spaces debate I am pro spaces.

However context is important. In Obsidian I can't press shift+space to unindent, I can do this with shift+tab. So in Obsidian I use tabs.

I don't intend to access these files outside of Obsidian 99% of the time, so I never bothered to flip on the setting that inserts spaces when you use the tab key.

thanksalot! I guess I will stick with tab then

[–] 667@lemmy.radio 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I’ve always used hyphens because if I later need to look at or parse the source, it may be difficult to tell what my intentions were. Moreso if for whatever reason I need to code something to handle my files—an unlikely case, but the small effort over time will be instantly realized.

[–] happeningtofry99158@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

I'm sorry my post was a bit unclear. My question is, do you use space+hyphen or tab+hyphen for indentation?

[–] 667@lemmy.radio 1 points 1 day ago

Oh I see! I am a tab kind of person, so I do tabs.

[–] phr@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

i insist on my editors replacing tab with four spaces .. so spaces. i do see the pain for parsing tho.

[–] happeningtofry99158@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

In Obsidian, I can easily indent a bullet point with tab and Obsidian uses tab indentation by default, is there a way to change that (to space indentation)?

[–] phr@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 day ago

frankly i dont know, it has been a while since i used it.