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Bulletin Board Code (BBCode)

In the early internet days, people wanted a simple way to mark up text with some formatting information, like making text bold or italic.
Allowing people to write HTML directly seemed a little complicated, as well as a security risk. Instead, forum programmers designed a simpler language they dubbed "Bulleting Board Code" (at the time, forums were called "Bulletin Boards").
Here's some example BBCode:
BBCode is a simple markup language.
It allows you to format text in:
[ul]
[b]bold[/b]
[i]italics[/i]
[s]strikethrough[/s]
urls [url=https://godotengine.org]the Godot Site[/url]
show images [img alt="The Godot Logo"]res://logo.png[/img]
and more!
[/ul]
This would be the result:
BBCode is a simple markup language. It allows you to format text in:
  • bold
  • italics
  • strikethrough
  • urls the Godot Site
  • show images The Godot Logo
  • and more!
Implementations of BBCode differ from program to program. In Godot, the popular markup codes are retained, but it has several more, less common features, such as tables, and also animations.
Get the full list in the Godot documentation: Godot BBCode reference.
In Godot, BBCode only works in RichTextLabel nodes.
BBcode can also be used in documentation docstrings, like so:
## This function adds two numbers together and returns the result.[br]
## [br]
## [b]Arguments:[/b][br]
## [param a]: The first number to add.[br]
## [param b]: The second number to add.[br]
## [br]
## [b]Returns:[/b][br]
## The sum of [code]a[/code] and [code]b[/code].[br]
## [br]
## [b]Example:[/b][br]
## [codeblock lang=gdscript]
## var result = add(1, 2)
## print(result)
## [/codeblock]
func add(a: int, b: int) -> int:
  return a + b
The accepted BBCode tags in Godot's documentation are different from the ones in RichTextLabel nodes. You can find the full list in the Godot documentation.

See Also

Related terms in the Glossary

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