Field guide / Rule 17 — From Markdown
Base Markdown has bold and italic, but no highlighter. Extended Markdown — the flavor editors like Obsidian speak — added one: wrap a phrase in ==double equals== and it glows on screen. Plain converters have no idea what to do with it, so most spill the equals signs onto the page. We read them for what they are and set a real highlighted run.
==important== is the extended-Markdown way of saying “mark this” — the digital equivalent of dragging a highlighter across a line. It isn’t part of standard Markdown, so a naive converter prints the equals signs verbatim and the emphasis is lost twice over. We recognise the pair and carry it across as an actual highlight, so the phrase you flagged stays flagged in your Word document.
A highlight in prose becomes a real one; a pair of equals inside a code span or a code block stays literal, because there == is an operator and means exactly what it says.
Written as it ==really== matters, here is how the highlight renders in a shared reading
page:
It really matters — the phrase you flagged stays flagged.
In short
The ==double-equals== convention is a highlighter, and we treat it like one — a real highlighted run in your document, not raw equals signs on the page. The one place we hold back is inside code, where == is an operator and must stay literal.
Want to see it on your own notes? Convert a document and your highlights come across with them.