Square bracket problem

Just started with Twine today, trying a few things, getting a small conversation with a NPC . The first link works fine and the square brackets are thick and black. the second link ones are feeble and light. Help needed please.

You are in another damp cell there is an old man sat on a bunk.

Leave [[cell ->Hallway]]

(link:“Hello old man”) [
“The old man smiles and says watca.”

]

(link:“Can I ask you a couple of questions ?”) [
“You can ask me three questions but I`m a bit hungry at the moment so get me a bread roll”
]

Can you explain the problem a bit more or share a screenshot of what you mean? I’m assuming you’re using Harlowe based on the syntax… when I rewrote exactly what you have here, everything looked fine. People playing your game will not see the square brackets that you are seeing in the editor.

The difference in syntax highlighting in the editor is because [[this is basic markup]] and (link:“This is a macro; it looks indistinguishable from the markup when you play the game, but functions a bit different under the hood, so to speak”).

I don’t know if the Typographical (curvy) quotes were added by this forum’s software, or in you original code. But be careful to only use standard single or double quotes when delimiting a String value.

<!-- these Link Label Strings are OK -->
(link: 'Delimited with standard single quotes')[...]
(link: "Delimited with standard double quotes")[...]

<!-- this Link Label String is Invalid -->
(link: “Delimited with typographical double quotes”)[...]

The textual content within your 2nd (link:) macro’s associated Hook contains a back-quote character between the I and m characters of I'm. And that character has special meaning, it is use in pairs to apply specific styling to text.

The quick brown `fox` jumps over the lazy `dog`.

And because your text only has one (the starting) of the pair, the highlighter doesn’t know where that styling is meant to end, which is affecting the pairing of the start [ and end ] characters of the Hook.

If you replace that back-quote with a standard single quote like so…

(link: "Can I ask you a couple of questions?")[
“You can ask me three questions but I'm a bit hungry at the moment so get me a bread roll”
]

…the the highlighter will be able to correctly tell where the containing Hook starts and ends.

Thanks for that guys, I just changed the ` for ’ and all works well now. Thanks for getting back so soon the help is most appreciated.