How to Escape Special Characters in JSON Strings

If your JSON string contains a double quote, a backslash, or a newline, you must escape it — otherwise the parser will reject the document.

The required escape sequences

Character	Escape	Notes
"	\"	Double quotes delimit the string
\	\\	Backslash is the escape character
newline	\n	LF — raw newlines are invalid
carriage return	\r	CR
tab	\t	Horizontal tab
form feed	\f	Rarely needed
backspace	\b	Rarely needed
/	\/	Optional — JSON allows it either way
Unicode	\uXXXX	Four hex digits, e.g. A = A

What breaks most often

Unescaped double quotes inside a string value:

// INVALID — the parser sees the string end after "Hello"
{ "message": "She said "Hello" to me" }

// Valid
{ "message": "She said \"Hello\" to me" }

Windows file paths contain backslashes:

// INVALID
{ "path": "C:\Users\alice\file.txt" }

// Valid
{ "path": "C:\\Users\\alice\\file.txt" }

Multi-line strings — JSON has no literal multi-line syntax. Use \n:

{ "note": "Line one\nLine two\nLine three" }

Programmatic escaping

Never hand-escape JSON you're building in code. Let the language do it:

const obj = { message: 'She said "Hello"', path: 'C:\\Users\\alice' };
const json = JSON.stringify(obj);
// {"message":"She said \"Hello\"","path":"C:\\Users\\alice"}

import json
json.dumps({"message": 'She said "Hello"'})
# '{"message": "She said \\"Hello\\""}'

What about control characters?

Any character with a code point below U+0020 (space) must be escaped as \uXXXX. Raw control characters in a JSON string are invalid even if some parsers tolerate them.

Try it

Paste your JSON into the JSON formatter and validator to catch unescaped characters instantly — it highlights the exact line where the syntax breaks.

For the broader picture of what else trips up JSON, see common JSON syntax errors.