How to escape strings in JSON

JSON strings must be wrapped in double quotes, and certain characters must be escaped.

Characters that commonly need escaping

• Double quote: \"
• Backslash: \\
• Newline: \n
• Tab: \t
• Carriage return: \r

Example

{
  "message": "Line1\nLine2",
  "path": "C:\\\\temp\\\\file.txt",
  "quote": "She said: \"hello\""
}

Common mistakes

• Using single quotes: {'a':'b'} is not valid JSON.
• Forgetting to escape backslashes in Windows paths.
• Copying multi-line text into a JSON string without converting line breaks to \n.

If your JSON won’t format, start here: Validate JSON.