# Disable character formatting changes on the forum?

**URL:** https://forum.syncthing.net/t/disable-character-formatting-changes-on-the-forum/24172
**Category:** Meta
**Created:** [April 14, 2025, 8:22am UTC](https://forum.syncthing.net/t/disable-character-formatting-changes-on-the-forum/24172 "2025-04-14T08:22:42Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![tomasz86](https://forum.syncthing.net/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/96bed5/32.png) [@tomasz86](https://forum.syncthing.net/u/tomasz86)
#### Post date: [April 14, 2025, 8:22am UTC](https://forum.syncthing.net/t/disable-character-formatting-changes-on-the-forum/24172/1 "2025-04-14T08:22:42Z")

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I wonder whether it could be possible to disable character changes that the forum software automatically enforces when formatting posts.

What I mean is automatic formatting like changing `--` to `–` when typing two `-`, and also changing `""` to `“”`. This happens a lot unless you use code formatting, which most users do not (and they usually don’t even know that there is such a thing).

The reason is that these formatting changes in many cases lead to butchered commands (I’ve seen a lot of those on the forum, especially with `""` changed into `“”`, which for this reason won’t work when copied and pasted into the command line), or they simply make things unclear (e.g. see [https://forum.syncthing.net/t/towards-syncthing-2-0/24072/50](https://forum.syncthing.net/t/towards-syncthing-2-0/24072/50) for the most recent example with `–` instead of `--`).

I understand that for stylistic reasons these kind of formatting changes may be useful in some cases, but our forum is more on the programming side, so I don’t think this automatic formatting really brings any particular value, and it definitely can mess commands or code in general up very easily.