Hello again, Planet Minecraft! This is part 1 of a blog series of every single tidbit of information about our beloved blocky game. This blog's topic: Minecraft formatting codes.

The section sign (which is the §) is the magic character used to format text. In vanilla Minecraft, it only works for formatting books and quills. External programs can be used to insert the character into other locations. Some servers substitute the character (one server I've been on used the ampersand (which is the &)). As to typing the character on a US/UK keyboard: ALT+2+1 or ALT+0+1+6+7. On a Mac US keyboard, it's OPTION+6. For Linux with compose key, it's COMPOSE+S+O. Let's get started.

Color Codes

Code	Official Name	In-game Name	RGB Value (Foreground)	Hex Value (Foreground)
§0	Black	black	0,0,0	000000
§1	Dark Blue	dark_blue	0,0,170	0000AA
§2	Dark Green	dark_green	0,170,0	00AA00
§3	Dark Aqua	dark_aqua	0,170,170	00AAAA
§4	Dark Red	dark_red	170,0,0	AA0000
§5	Dark Purple	dark_purple	170,0,170	AA00AA
§6	Gold	gold	255,170,0	FFAA00
§7	Gray	gray	170,170,170	AAAAAA
§8	Dark Gray	dark_gray	85,85,85	555555
§9	Blue	blue	85,85,255	5555FF
§a	Green	green	85,255,85	55FF55
§b	Aqua	aqua	85,255,255	55FFFF
§c	Red	red	255,85,85	FF5555
§d	Light Purple	light_purple	255,85,255	FF55FF
§e	Yellow	yellow	255,255,85	FFFF55
§f	White	white	255,255,255	FFFFFF

Formatting Codes

Code	Official Name
§k	Obfuscated (cycling through random characters)
§l	Bold
§m	Strikethrough
§n	Underline
§o	Italics
§r	Reset