Comments

Parts of the text in reST source can be "commented out":

Any text which begins with an explicit markup start but doesn't use the syntax of any of the constructs above, is a comment.

See http://docutils.sourceforge.net/docs/user/rst/quickref.html#comments

This means: write ..␠, that is dot-dot-blank at the beginning of the line, taking the indentation level into account.

Examples

Example:

..  So here we have a comment.
    It can spread over lines as
    long as you keep the indentation.

Example:

..  This text will not be shown,
    but, for instance, in HTML might be
    rendered as an HTML comment, if the html writer is set up for that.

Example:

..  here we start an unordered list:

*   one

*   two

    ..  this is another comment. Since it's within the list it is aligned
        with 'two', which is the contents of the second list item

*   three

Open tasks (todo)

Use .. todo:: for notes addressed to other authors. Its content never reaches the rendered page, which is intended: a todo note is internal. It is the better choice over a plain comment, because todo:: is a distinct string that can be searched for, while .. alone also begins every directive and every anchor.

The flip side is that nothing reminds you of it while reading the rendered page. Search for todo:: before merging instead of expecting to notice an open task in a preview.