How do I type a literal asterisk * as the first character in the normal text portion of org mode?

I'm very new to emacs and org mode, and I'm simply going through tutorials and trying simple stuff out. Using macport. I want this: * Key Bindings Examples (This is a heading) (The following is plain text.) M-s o regex buffer to new window (M-x occur) * Type an asterisk to start a heading ** Type two asterisks for 2nd level heading, etc. However, if I try to do that, then the last two lines become actual headings. This stack exchange answer might effectively contain a good answer, but I wanted to double-check here. https://emacs.stackexchange.com/questions/16688/how-can-i-escape-the-in-org-mode-to-prevent-bold-fontification

If you want the first character to be an asterisk when exporting, try writing a space before it.

I'm new and don't even understand exporting yet. What I want is simply this: * Key Bindings Examples (This is a heading) (The following is plain text.) M-s o regex buffer to new window (M-x occur) * Type an asterisk to start a heading ** Type two asterisks for 2nd level heading, etc. However, if I try to do that, then the last two lines become actual headings.

Use something like this: #+begin_src org ,* Heading 1 ,** Heading 2 ,*** Heading 3 #+end_src

one of the SO comments mentions this, but [pretty entities](https://orgmode.org/manual/Special-Symbols.html) is prob the way to go. asterisk doesn't seem included so you'll have to add it yourself

When I write that, it literally looks exactly like that, and not like what I want.

This method is the only way to escape asterisks etc. The commas and SRC markers are not visible in exports. Emacs is not a WYSIWYG word processor, so you cannot hide everything you don't want to see. There would be simply no way for Emacs to understand the difference between a heading or a non-heading without additional characters.

Asterisk is included! \ast Then use C-c C-x = (org-toggle-pretty-entities) The other option is a zero width SPC character. There's pros/cons to each. The org style police seem to prefer the former.

Evidently, I can get what I want from pretty entities, "\ast", and (org-toggle-pretty-entities).

Nice workaround. This is what I love about Emacs - there is always a way. You can add `#+startup: entitiespretty` so that the buffer starts with this variable set (only the buffer).

It seems semantically correct to use a code block for your use-case. Even in this question, you put it in a code block. You are trying to demonstrate how to code using the Org language. Therefore, I would prefer the code block over pretty entities.

There are a whole bunch of different asterisk variants in unicode. https://unicode-search.net/unicode-namesearch.pl?term=ASTERISK Maybe you could use one of those instead?

Now that's a creative option, thanks!

Ahh I figured I was misunderstanding something here. This perfectly helps me understand my missing mental context for /u/danderzei's code block answer, thanks!

Oh! Actually on second thought, this is a perfect solution since it also works BEFORE exporting. I'm just writing free-form text, like note taking, so I can just put a space before everything on that line. This is clearly the most simple solution for this specific use-case. The following works just fine. * Key Bindings Examples (This is a heading) <- one space here M-s o regex buffer to new window (M-x occur) * Type an asterisk to start a heading ** Type two asterisks for 2nd level heading, etc.

I disagree – that isn't code but a table. A star in a table also wouldn't trigger a heading.

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