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Included in:

- user-manual: Literal Text and Blocks
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Literal paragraphs and blocks display the text you write exactly as you enter it.
Literal text is treated as preformatted text.
The text is shown in a fixed-width font and endlines are preserved.
Only <<user-manual#special-characters,special characters>> and callouts are replaced when the document is converted.

Literal blocks are defined three ways:

. Indenting the first line of a paragraph by one or more spaces
. Applying the `literal` attribute to a paragraph or block
. Using the literal block delimiter (`\....` )

When a line begins with one or more spaces it is displayed as a literal paragraph.
This method is a quick and easy way to insert code snippets.

.Implicit literal text
[source]
----
include::ex-literal.adoc[tag=imp]
----

.Result: Implicit literal text
====
include::ex-literal.adoc[tag=imp]
====

When you want an entire block of text to be literal and would prefer not to indent it, set the `literal` attribute on top of the element.

.Literal style paragraph syntax
[source]
----
include::ex-literal.adoc[tag=para]
----

.Result: Literal style paragraph
====
include::ex-literal.adoc[tag=para]
====

Finally, you can surround the content you want rendered as literal by enclosing it in a set of literal block delimiters (`\....`).
This method is useful when the content consists of several elements that are separated by blank lines.

.Literal delimited block syntax
[source]
----
include::ex-literal.adoc[tag=block]
----

Notice in the output that the bold text formatting is not applied to the text nor are the three consecutive periods replaced by the ellipsis Unicode character.

.Result: Literal delimited block
====
include::ex-literal.adoc[tag=block]
====
