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Included in:

- user-manual: Text Substitutions: Preventing substitutions
- writers-guide: preventing subs
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Asciidoctor provides several approaches for preventing substitutions.

.Backslash escaping
// tag::backslash[]
To prevent punctuation from being interpreted as formatting markup, precede it with a backslash (`\`).
If the formatting punctuation begins with two characters (e.g., `+__+`), you need to precede it with two backslashes (`+\\+`).
This is also how you can prevent character and attribute references from substitution.
When your document is processed, the backslash is removed so it doesn't display in your output.

[source]
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include::ex-subs.adoc[tag=slash]
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// end::backslash[]
You can also prevent substitutions with <<user-manual#passthroughs,macro and block passthroughs>>.
