# Mathjax rendering problems due to backslashes interpretation by Markdown processor

**URL:** <https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/mathjax-rendering-problems-due-to-backslashes-interpretation-by-markdown-processor/30482>\
**Category:** support\
**Tags:** typesetting\
**Created:** [January 7, 2021, 5:35pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/mathjax-rendering-problems-due-to-backslashes-interpretation-by-markdown-processor/30482 "2021-01-07T17:35:58Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 2

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**Author:** ![alexandros](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@alexandros](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/alexandros)\
**Post date:** [January 7, 2021, 5:51pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/mathjax-rendering-problems-due-to-backslashes-interpretation-by-markdown-processor/30482/2 "2021-01-07T17:51:45Z")

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> [@rmsmsgood](#):
>
> even in this page also!

The forum’s post editor also uses Markdown.

The syntax is not a peculiarity of Hugo, rather it is a peculiarity of the Markdown spec that clashes with MathJax.

Please, see this post and the rest of that topic for more info:

> [@Use goldmark-mathjax extension](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/use-goldmark-mathjax-extension/25721/20):
>
> @ju52 Did you read the first of this thread? OK, I will describe the problem here again. The problem of this thread is a conflict between the Markdown spec and the MathJax spec. When we write the next TeX document in a Markdown file. $$ \begin{vmatrix}a & b\\ c & d \end{vmatrix} $$ Hugo processes the input with the goldmark (CommonMark) and we will get the following HTML output. \<p\>$$ \begin{vmatrix}a &amp; b \\<br\> c &amp; d \end{vmatrix} $$\</p\> Since MathJax cannot process the \<br\> tag, t…

You can always switch to using `.html` instead of .`md` content files for your Hugo project to avoid dealing with the Markdown processor altogether.

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