Question

Is it possible to create a span element with markdown? I’m using the Kramdown converter.

Thanks!

Answer 1

According to the Markdown syntax spec/documentation, you should be able to use a plain HTML <span> element. Additionally, the Kramdown documentation has an entire section on using HTML elements in general, and <span> in particular.

From Kramdown’s docs:

HTML tags cannot only be used on the block-level but also on the
span-level. Span-level HTML tags can only be used inside one
block-level element, it is not possible to use a start tag in one
block level element and the end tag in another. Note that only correct
XHTML is supported! This means that you have to use, for example, <br/>
instead of <br> (although kramdown tries to fix such errors if
possible).

By default, kramdown parses kramdown syntax inside span HTML tags.
However, this behaviour can be configured with the parse_span_html
option. If this is set to true, then syntax parsing in HTML spans is
enabled, if it is set to false, parsing is disabled. It is also
possible to enable/disable syntax parsing on a tag per tag basis using
the markdown attribute:

• If an HTML tag has an attribute markdown="0", then no parsing (except parsing of HTML span tags) is done inside that HTML tag.

• If an HTML tag has an attribute markdown="1", then the content of the tag is parsed as span level elements.

• If an HTML tag has an attribute markdown="block", then a warning is issued because HTML spans cannot contain block-level elements and
  the attribute is ignored.

• If an HTML tag has an attribute markdown="span", then the content of the tag is parsed as span level elements.