# Properties: Alias key gets changed to "aliases"

**URL:** <https://forum.obsidian.md/t/properties-alias-key-gets-changed-to-aliases/66217>\
**Category:** Help\
**Tags:** properties\
**Created:** [September 1, 2023, 11:44am UTC](https://forum.obsidian.md/t/properties-alias-key-gets-changed-to-aliases/66217 "2023-09-01T11:44:05Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 31

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**Author:** ![CawlinTeffid](https://forum.obsidian.md/user_avatar/forum.obsidian.md/cawlinteffid/32/82899_2.png) [@CawlinTeffid](https://forum.obsidian.md/u/CawlinTeffid)\
**Post date:** [September 8, 2023, 8:59pm UTC](https://forum.obsidian.md/t/properties-alias-key-gets-changed-to-aliases/66217/31 "2023-09-08T20:59:35Z")

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A goal of the new setup is to prevent users from writing bad YAML, but the reformatting of existing YAML is largely a side effect. YAML is horribly complicated and has numerous ways to write any given thing; Obsidian doesn’t preserve the exact formatting when it writes back to your file. From [API: processFrontMatter removes string quotes, comments, types, formatting - #6 by Licat](https://forum.obsidian.md/t/api-processfrontmatter-removes-string-quotes-comments-types-formatting/65851/6) which I linked earlier:

> The decision we made is for plugins to be able to interact with frontmatter easily. We do this by converting YAML into a JS object, which means it lose all of its YAML specific formatting and comments. This makes it easy for plugin developers to read and modify properties of a note, without requiring them to interact with an excessively complex YAML syntax tree, which would require them to understand how YAML is parsed internally.

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