MD081 - Inline emphasis should not be excessive¶

Aliases: no-excessive-emphasis

Disabled by default. Both thresholds are unset by default, so the rule emits nothing until you set a limit. Setting a limit to 0 forbids the construct entirely. There is no markdownlint equivalent; this is a rumdl-specific readability rule.

What this rule does¶

Flags prose that over-uses inline emphasis. AI-generated Markdown in particular tends to sprinkle **bold** across running text (**this** and **that** and **the other**), which adds visual noise without adding meaning and is harder to read in both raw and rendered form.

The rule offers two independent checks:

max-per-paragraph - flags a paragraph that contains more than this many emphasis spans.
max-consecutive - flags a run of more than this many adjacent emphasis spans separated only by whitespace and punctuation. A connector word (e.g. and, or) between two spans breaks the run.

Each list item and each blockquote level is treated as its own paragraph, so spans are never aggregated across structural boundaries.

Emphasis inside code spans, code blocks, links, HTML tags and <code> content, math, and flavor-specific markup (MkDocs/MDX) is never counted, so patterns like foo(**args) inside a fence or `**not bold**` do not trigger the rule.

Why this matters¶

Emphasis is meaningful only when it is rare. When most noun phrases in a paragraph are bold, the emphasis stops guiding the reader and becomes clutter. Trimming it back improves both the raw Markdown and the rendered output.

Configuration¶

Option	Type	Default	Description
`targets`	string	`strong`	Which spans to count: `strong` (bold only), `emphasis` (italic only), or `all` (both). A combined `*bold italic*` counts once under `all`.
`max-per-paragraph`	integer	unset	Maximum emphasis spans allowed per paragraph. Unset disables this check; `0` forbids all emphasis in a paragraph.
`max-consecutive`	integer	unset	Maximum length of a run of adjacent emphasis spans. Unset disables this check; `0` forbids any emphasis.

[MD081]
# Which spans to count: "strong" (bold), "emphasis" (italic), or "all".
targets = "strong"
# Flag a paragraph with more than this many emphasis spans (0 = off).
max-per-paragraph = 4
# Flag a run of more than this many adjacent emphasis spans (0 = off).
max-consecutive = 3

Examples¶

Assuming max-per-paragraph = 3:

Correct¶

The key insight is that performance matters when choosing a **data structure**.

Incorrect¶

The **key insight** is that **performance** matters when **choosing** the right **data structure**.

Four bold spans in one paragraph exceed the limit of 3.

Automatic fixes¶

None. Stripping emphasis or down-converting **bold** to *italic* changes the meaning of the text (and **critical** may be deliberate), so the rule is diagnostic only.