# Support for markdown atx headers?

**URL:** <https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/support-for-markdown-atx-headers/2049>\
**Category:** support\
**Created:** [November 7, 2015, 7:16pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/support-for-markdown-atx-headers/2049 "2015-11-07T19:16:30Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![bowmanjd](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.gohugo.io/bowmanjd/32/861_2.png) [@bowmanjd](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/bowmanjd)\
**Post date:** [November 7, 2015, 7:16pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/support-for-markdown-atx-headers/2049/1 "2015-11-07T19:16:30Z")

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I can’t seem to get my markdown to be parsed properly when I use atx style headers.

I am able to get h1 and h2 headers by using this:

```markdown
Header 1
=========

Header 2
---------

```

But not

```markdown
#Header 1
##Header 2
###Header 3

```

In the above example, the generated html simply reads literally: `###Header 3`, etc.

I don’t see anyone else having this problem, though, so I must be doing something wrong. Any tips? Do I have a blackfriday setting wrong?

I assume so, as my tests with blackfriday indicate that `blackfriday.MarkdownCommon` fails to render atx style headers properly, while `blackfriday.MarkdownBasic` works fine. I just can’t see documented anywhere what setting I am supposed to change. Again, my apologies for not seeing this somewhere.

My config.toml:

```auto
baseurl = "https://mysite.com/"
languageCode = "en-us"
title = "My Web Site"
pygmentsCodeFences = true
pygmentsUseClasses = true

```

Thanks for any response!  
Jonathan

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![bep](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.gohugo.io/bep/32/3332_2.png) [@bep](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/bep)\
**Post date:** [November 7, 2015, 7:58pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/support-for-markdown-atx-headers/2049/2 "2015-11-07T19:58:26Z")

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> [@bowmanjd](#):
>
> I assume so, as my tests with blackfriday indicate that blackfriday.MarkdownCommon fails to render atx style headers properly, while blackfriday.MarkdownBasic works fine.

Hugo uses a set of its own defaults + some config options. Looks like there are a setting in MarkdownBasic that we do not enable, that we maybe should. If you can figure out that setting and create a GitHub issue in Hugo we can fix it.

But, I thought there should be a whitespace between # and the header, so this works for me:

```auto
# Header 1
## Header 2
### Header 3

```

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![bowmanjd](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.gohugo.io/bowmanjd/32/861_2.png) [@bowmanjd](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/bowmanjd)\
**Post date:** [November 7, 2015, 8:25pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/support-for-markdown-atx-headers/2049/3 "2015-11-07T20:25:37Z")

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Ha! That was it. Which makes me suspect that the EXTENSION\_SPACE\_HEADERS is set in both Hugo and MarkdownCommon. Which is probably a good idea!

Thanks so much for your prompt response!