This is the first intermediate guide posted to cover all things formatting. Find all the available guides here.

Formatting 101

In this guide you will find tips and tricks regarding formatting to take full advantage of how Discord parses text, embeds and pings. Use these features to your advantage when writing resources, official announcements and other news. For a full overview, check out Markdown Text 101.

Formatting basics

There are a few native options available that will help you format your text. Let's dive in straight away:

Header large (# Header large)

Header medium (## Header medium)

Header small (### Header small)

The headers are a more recent addition and great for any read-only channel that is meant to be read carefully. You can also include headers in announcements if you have a lot of news to cover.

• List (* List)
  • Indented list ( * Indented list)

Alternatively, you can use - instead of * . Lists were also recently added and it provides the ability to create bulleted lists with one level of indentation. Great for patch notes, rules and any other summaries.

• Italics *Italics* (or _Italics_)
• Bold **Bold**
• Bold italics ***Bold italics*** (alternative: _**bold italics**_)
• Underline __Underline__ (doesn't seem to be supported by Lemmy)

Additionally, you can combine them like __*underline italics*__, __**underline bold**__ & __***underline bold italics***__. While they should be used sparingly, it can help emphasise certain elements of your text.

Quote > Quote (use one > for each line break. If the quote is at the end of your message, you can use three to makeall following text quoted text (>>> ).

Code blocks (`Code blocks`) will prevent formatting, as you might have noticed in these guides.

If you want to do multiple lines in a single block, use three `'s at the start and end of the sentence like Multi-line code blocks (```Multi-line code blocks```). This creates a box filling the entire width of the chat window.

Timestamps

Timestamps can be used in Discord messages to include a date or time relative to the user's timezone and regional settings. These timestamps are Unix Timestamps and are formatted like <t:1698591600:f>. Unless you know exactly how many seconds have passed since January 1st 1970, it’s best to use an online tool like this one to generate your timestamps.

You can use various formats to choose how much information you’re showing about the linked date and time as shown in the image above. This will mostly depend on the use case, like using the suffix :R> for a countdown and :f> or :F> for an event that starts around a certain time.

Embeds

Discord is able to embed information by pulling the image, title, description and/or author from a URL. While this can be fine most of the time, there are moments when you don’t want embedded information to show up.

To prevent embeds from happening, you have two options. For singular links, the easiest way to prevent embedding is by enclosing the link with angle brackets, like this: <link> (or [Link text](<link>) for masked links). If you have multiple links in your message and you want to get rid of all embeds you can simply click the "X" of any embed that is at the bottom of your message:

If you want specific embeds to go through, your only option is to use the brackets for the links you don’t want to appear. Social media posts, marketplace links and videos should be embedded as it increases interaction. People can view the embedded post without having to go away from Discord, making conversations easier.

Hyperlinks

Another recent addition is the ability to create hyperlinks. By using brackets and parentheses you have the ability to mask links. This is not only great for cleaning up links, but also a perfect tool to shorten long links for the reader. You can still manually disable embed cards by using the angle brackets [Link text](<link>) or by clicking the X that appears below the message.

Forcing line breaks

Aside from text formatting and embedding, there are various tricks you can use to increase the readability of posts that will be read often. Because of the message character limit of 2000 (or 4000 with Nitro), it often is impossible to include everything in one single post in a read-only channel. But when posting multiple messages in a row or adding images between posts, you will find that separate messages have no line breaks between them, reducing the readability of a very important channel. You can't start a new post with a line break either, as Discord automatically removes those.

Luckily, there’s a simple workaround: force Markdown on a space ( ) by using underscores or asterisks (_ _ or * *). This forces Discord to render the space in italics even though it literally is just a space, and recognise it as a full line. See the image below to compare:

Using emoji

Next to conveying emotions and reactions with emoji, you can also use them for formatting purposes. You can have them be the bullet points of lists, icons for links or use them to put emphasis on certain words. Another helpful tool is to create an invisible emoji to resemble indentation. While we now have bulleted lists with one level of indentation, it might not prove enough if you want to build more sophisticated lists. Simply create a transparent image (128x128px is the basic canvas for emoji, I opted for 128x32px) that resembles the size of an indent and upload it as an emoji to use it with your post:

👈 see the indent over here?

💡 Tip

Uploading formative emoji to your server will allow other users to use it too. With a Discord Nitro subscription you could opt to upload them to a private server, if you are more comfortable with that.

Using pins and @mentions

Pinning a message was an effective way to store information that is referenced often. Now with Onboarding, you can build resource pages for everyone to easily browse without having to manage pins. This makes pinning messages more applicable when the message refers to the channel the message is pinned in.

Where to pin messages

When you have channels for bug reports or feedback, it is quite useful to pin reminders that help users get started. A post explaining how to format a bug report or search for log files is a good example of information that you want accessible for everyone in high traffic channels.

If your post is in a read-only channel there is no need to pin it, especially if it's the only post in that channel. No further chat will ever remove those message(s) from view, so pinning that only adds nothing but clutter. Speaking of clutter: you can delete the pin notification message (saying "... pinned a message to this channel. See all the pins.") like any other message. If you really want to pin a message that users won’t be able to scroll past, at least remove the notification from the channel to keep it looking clean.

Lastly, I want to emphasize that as with many other aspects of Discord, less is more. For pins not to lose any meaning, use them sparingly as little nuggets of knowledge you can direct traffic to and your users can rely on. Additionally, nobody wants to read through twenty pins in a channel to figure out what they need to do or be reminded of. Consider creating a resource page with the Onboarding functionality. Be sure to regularly take a few minutes to check your pins to see if they are still relevant as well. Most of the times, they are very time-specific and could be outdated information.

When to use @everyone and @here

The @everyone mention should not be used lightly as a lot of notifications might provoke members to mute or even leave the server. I recommend to only use @everyone in messages that are relevant to the game or Discord community, and are of high importance. Even when members have muted the server suppressing notifications, this is the only @mention that will give them a red notification icon.

Bear in mind it’s very hard to get members to unmute your server if they decided it was too much. Try to assign roles based on notification interests and @mention those instead. This is beneficial to both of you: members are in control of what news they are subscribed to and you will be get insights on what people are interested in as well.

As for @here, it only pings online users that don't have any idle status. This is helpful if you need anyone's attention about something happening right now but will probably end in the near future, like a server outage or taking questions after a live presentation. Bear in mind that people who log in the day after still see the red notification, so if it's no longer relevant be sure to communicate that part, too.

💡 Tip

If you want to link the role mention so bots and other pages on your Discord server can use it too, write the @mention like this: <@&RoleID>. For the Role ID go to the Roles setting of your server and right-click on the role that you want to @mention and select “Copy ID”. You can also do this for channels by writing <#ChannelID>. This makes hard-linking channels possible in embedded messages, too.

This guide is for moderators and any administrators who moderate chat. In this section I will provide information about Discord’s native Automod, show some tips and features to make your life as a mod easier, and list some attitude goals to be an effective moderator and potentially step up to be an admin. Whether you do this for family, a friend, a complete stranger, paid or voluntarily: thank you for keeping Discord servers a safe place for everyone to feel at home!

Auto-moderation

To make moderating a server as easy as possible, there are several settings and methods to implement that will save yourself a lot of time. While auto-moderation via a Discord bot is not necessarily something of the past, this section will only cover the Automod settings that are natively supported. If you aren’t an admin yourself, ask for the server admin to implement these features to help safeguard the community and yourself.

Raid protection

This will help if the server is joined by a lot of accounts in a short amount of time as it will prompt users for a CAPTCHA. The additional activity alerts can help you monitor unusual DM activity to help protect members.

DM and spam protection

These settings refer to the verification level, rules screen and the privacy of the server members. It’s recommended to mirror the rules screen of Onboarding if this is enabled.

Automod

Automod has only been possible with bots until recently. This feature allows for deleting messages before they are sent, meaning no more unread messages icon anymore after cleaning up spam or abusive content. I recommend everything being enabled except custom words, as that will probably be configured based on how your community grows.

Permissions

This will already be activated if Community has been enabled. These settings require users with moderator roles to have 2FA set up and removes any risky permissions from @everyone.

Mod tools

Logging channels

Together with the automatic filters of Automod, one or more logging channels will be extremely helpful to keep track of user and moderator actions. If you’ve set up flags with the Automod rules, you likely already have a logging channel. Adding tracking user joins, leaves, edited messages, deleted messages and bans is recommended to ensure you can catch users that manipulate messages to break the rules. For example, when someone tries to spam slurs in chat but is stopped by the Automod filter you might want to ban them afterwards, depending on the severity of the messages.

If you need a bot for logging purposes, you can find recommendations in a later guide. It’s beneficial to use a bot that will include the user ID so you can always track users to follow up, even when they leave the server. Deploying a logging channel is a crucial part of staying in the loop and keeping track of what happens in the server.

Copying IDs from users, messages and channels

Before you can copy IDs, you will need to activate Developer Mode. Find this under ‘Advanced’ in your app settings on PC as well as mobile. Now you can copy IDs of messages, users, channels and roles by right clicking or long pressing the content and selecting ‘Copy ID’. This will help to successfully identify, report and/or ban users that are not in the server anymore. You can also copy a message link which can be helpful to post if you need to direct traffic to a specific message. To retrieve the message link, right click the message and press “Copy Message Link”. On mobile, tap and hold on the message and press “Share”.

💡 Tip

Next to copying IDs for moderation purposes, you can copy role IDs to mention them directly like this: <@&roleID>. This is useful for mentioning the roles anywhere that’s not a message or through an embedded message, like with a bot. Aside from role IDs you can also do this with channel IDs, although this is generally limited to linking in Event descriptions and channel topics.

Removing reactions

You can remove both all and individual reactions from a post if the situation warrants it, like emoji that break the server rules. Simply right click the message and find “Remove Reactions” to remove all of an individual reaction, or "Remove All Reactions" to purge all emoji reactions from the post. If you would like to remove an individual reaction emoji by a user, click “View Reactions” instead to view the entire list categorised by emoji. Simply click on the X that appears on the right side when hovering over a user to remove it.

💡 Tip

Admins can prevent users from posting reaction emoji by going to the channel or role permissions, and finding the ‘Add Reactions’ toggle. Bear in mind that users will always be able to add to existing emoji added by other users that are allowed to do so.

Members Page

The members page is a recent feature that gives you an overview of all the members including account age, server join age, the invite link they used, role they are assigned and potential flags. The flags are currently limited to timed out users and unusual DM activity. For timed out users, it will show how long is left until the user isn’t muted anymore. Unfortunately, you can not see the reason added by the admin or mod that timed out the user.

The unusual DM activity is more of a mystery, but this is by design as sharing any hard limits would open it up to abuse. When a member has sent an unusual amount of DMs (compared to your server’s average) to users who aren’t friends in the last 24 hours, the user will get flagged. Bear in mind it’s just a flag; you will still need to take action or talk to the user to find out whether they are truly spamming people. To see this channel you need to have permissions to manage users, and kick/ban them, or have administrator permissions.

Moderator Goals

Being a moderator can mean different things from server to server. In this section I will cover some goals that will help you approach any type of moderation with the right attitude.

Internal Relations

A hidden moderator channel will need to be created to provide a space for alerting other moderators about mod activities or discussing user activity. Ideally this channel is separated from the logging channel, to keep moderator discussions clear of Automod flags and bot logs. Especially on servers that are globally active, even just keeping each other in the loop is helpful to determine follow-up actions.

It can also act as a bridge between administrator and moderators to discuss server feedback and user sentiment. Moderators can suggest adding tools or changing settings to help catch frequent rule-breaking activity, and administrators can help by pinning moderator guidelines and helpful resources, and preparing moderators for any upcoming changes to the server.

User Relations

Be friendly, humble & empathetic. Nobody likes a community member that is aggressive, doesn't allow for other people's opinion or has a giant ego. As a mod you should get along with the users in a server and take time to be friendly and empathetic to others. Remind others - through your behaviour - that even though you're a person of authority, you're still a human being with feelings.

Understand the rules of the server you moderate. Don't be a hypocrite. The rules apply for you as well, so make sure you steer your discussions within these lines. Aim to create a non-toxic environment and act swiftly on rule breakers to ensure everyone feels safe. Not everyone who feels unsafe actually speaks up, so try to be proactive when approaching rule-breakers.

Be engaging and add value. Users should be able to approach you with any concerns as moderators are usually the first people contacted when a user has a question or wants to report another user. Be sure to welcome new people to the server, answer questions and provide support with user safety and security questions. If you can't resolve a user's issue directly, direct them to the portal/person/platform that will help them further with troubleshooting so it doesn’t end there.

All this activity does mean that you will be seen a lot in chat, so make sure that you focus on quality over quantity. Don’t be too overbearing though, as not all questions and concerns are of the highest priority. Sometimes people prefer to receive recommendations they see as non-biased too, so they rather have the community answer. It can pay off to hang back a little and let the community answer then, as it generates engagement and trust between users.

Growing into an admin

If you are a moderator that wants to help admins or potentially be one, there’s a few things that might help you get some experience and grow your skill set. These activities vary in scale and user interaction to provide a few different methods in supporting other admins or working on yourself as a moderator.

Report on feedback from the community

By interacting with the community, you might stumble upon certain trends or find that people are in need of something that the server currently doesn’t offer. It can help to report on these trends and condense individual feedback to suggestions or changes for the server to the server admin(s). Bonus points if you can list some solutions as well.

Take care of small jobs

Offering to help handle things behind the scenes can be of great help to server admins, especially if they are solo team members spending their free time on their project. You can ask for bite-sized tasks that are easy to outsource, like setting up links, rules, announcements, auto messages, providing feedback on a livestream before announcing the stream publicly, etc.

Run server Events

Discord allows for various events to be hosted and provides notifications and a schedule for server members to browse. These events can be directly related to a voice or stage channel, but can also link to an external event like a livestream, release trailer or something that’s happening in the real world.

Depending on your role as a moderator, you could help organize some of these events that are related to the community, or support the admins in executing the events. You can also create an event that resembles a timeframe when something is happening, like a competition, giveaway raffle or a national holiday.

Accessibility (original credit: @ridgeracer)

This guide will cover some basics regarding accessibility. Starting with what elements to take into account for people who are visually impaired, touching on tips on how to deal with audio channels and notification sounds, and finally the use of inclusive language. Keep in mind that these are only guidelines, and shouldn't act as a strict rulebook. Pick from this what you feel is best for your server.

Keeping graphics accessible

Next to have graphics and text that is accessible to people without any visual impairments, it is important to include support for screen readers and colour filtering. You can do this by adding alt text, placing emoji more strategically, avoiding long lists and testing your server with various different colour schemes.

Make Alt Text part of your workflow

Visually impaired people can use screen readers to access Discord, and recently support for Alt Text has been added. Try to accompany every image shared with a description and keep it up to allow for visually impaired readers to get the full context of art, guides and screenshots. Try to avoid using the phrase “picture” or “photo” but feel free to be specific about the type like “screenshot” or “brand art”.

Emoji go last, not first

Things like emoji and special characters are a hassle for people that navigate using screen readers. When using emoji in things, including but not limited to categories and rules posts, consider adding these at the end of your line. So General Chat︱ 💬 instead of 💬 ︱General Chat.

Screen readers will read the emoji name as well, so by adding it to the end of the text it adds context to the text instead of text to an emoji name, if that makes sense. Meanwhile, people with sight can still visually scan the server for the emoji assigned to a certain channel or category.

Avoid bulking up read-only content

It’s extremely helpful to post rules and other lists in separate messages for people with screen readers. If your lists are in one single post, it's would force users to listen to the entire post in one go. Breaking them up into separate messages will let screen readers scroll through lists line by line. By designating these channels Resource Pages through the Onboarding setup you can remove the formatting that makes separate messages look less visually pleasing on mobile devices. On PC separate messages will look fine. If this is not an option for the channel in question, keep in mind it’s not your fault that Discord does not have proper screen reader accessibility.

Compatibility with themes and filters

When you're setting up colours for roles it’s good practice to make sure they're visible on light, dark, and the (experimental) AMOLED theme. You can find the experimental AMOLED dark theme by tapping “Dark Theme” a few times in the app’s appearance settings. Browse your server with it to see if everything is still clear. You can go a step further by testing them against various colour filters as well, that represent the perspective of users with a colour vision deficiency (CVD).

In Windows 10/11, go to the accessibility settings to find colour filters in the accessibility options. By toggling these you can test what people with colour vision deficiency see to check whether the server is still accessible. On Android, it’s hidden in de Developer Options under “Simulate colour space” and on iOS it’s under Accessibility > Display & Text Size > Color Filters.

Audio & Notifications

Contrary to visual elements, sounds and notifications are a lot harder to grasp. Trying to envision what other users can experience might be difficult. The key is to be aware of how sound can be different for everyone.

Use pings sparingly

Since Discord unfathomably has no support for custom sounds, the ping sound can be a pain or at best a nuisance for some people. Consider setting up assignable roles to let people opt in to the notifications they want to receive. This will help them control the frequency and potential urgency to act on the ping.

Force push-to-talk and set expectations

Consider having voice channels where people are forced to use push to talk to lessen the amount of simultaneous noise. There can be a lot of background noises that add up to the experience. In the same way, music bots can be fun but you should designate what channels are for the music bot so users know what to expect. Music requests can get overwhelming for people who are hard of hearing (HoH), or people with Auditory Processing Disorder (APD).

Accessibility through inclusivity

Inclusiveness lets a wider range of people feel welcome in your community. It is very important for members to be able to feel connected and valued, and you can directly impact that with your messaging and announcements. Allow users to specify pronouns

Currently Discord has support for setting op pronouns but not every user has access yet. Setting up roles through your Onboarding post-join questions for users to display their pronouns is a great way to avoid any awkward situations, and is more welcoming.

Avoid specific gender identities until specified

Avoid saying he/she, and use singular they instead to be inclusive of all gender identities. Avoid If he/she hasn't…, and instead use If they haven't….

Explicitly ban the usage of abusive terms

You might think it's a no-brainer, but a surprising amount of servers don't do this from the get-go. If you explicitly make a rule against this can actually help a lot people feel safer. Things that should be banned are the obvious culprits like racism, ableism, homophobia and such. Otherwise, listen to your community, don't dismiss someone who brings up something in your server that made them feel uncomfortable, and try to see it from their point of view. Discuss what action should be taken with your admins and moderators instead of waiting for it to escalate. Users will not always speak out and might just leave silently, so be aware of what’s going on in the server as well and act swiftly. The longer you let slurs and ableism exist on your server, the less appealing it becomes for everyone.