TeXMarkup

ticked becomes \code{}, $dollared$ becomes \math{}, *starred* becomes \bold{}, ^carets^ become \super{} and ~tildes~ become \sub{}.

Inside a maths run the scripts follow TeX instead: ^ and _ apply to the brace group or alphanumeric run which follows them, as in $x^2$, $u_i$ and $e^{-x^2}$. The paired prose notation does not apply there.

Delimiters rather than bare macros, because these very same strings are also emitted verbatim into the generated markdown documentation. There every one of these already carries the same meaning, whereas a macro would be gibberish.

Prose outside the delimiters passes through untouched, so the full macro vocabulary remains available for whatever the delimiters cannot express. A doubled delimiter stands for a literal one, and an unterminated run is left exactly as written.

As in CommonMark, a backslash before any ASCII punctuation character makes that character literal, in every context. The one exception is \-, which keeps its TeX meaning of a discretionary hyphen.