Flake8 formatting and changelog entry

Author: martynp

docs/changelog.md

@@ -16,6 +16,8 @@ See the [Contributing Guide](contributing.md) for details.
 
 * Ensure nested elements inside inline comments are properly unescaped (#1571).
 * Make the docs build successfully with mkdocstrings-python 2.0 (#1575).
+* Backtick formatting permitted in reference links to match conventional
+  links (#495).
 
 ## [3.10.0] - 2025-11-03
 

markdown/inlinepatterns.py

@@ -931,7 +931,7 @@ def makeTag(self, href: str, title: str, text: str) -> etree.Element:
         if title:
             el.set('title', title)
 
-        if '`' in text: # Process possible backtick within text
+        if '`' in text:  # Process possible backtick within text
             m = self.RE_BACKTICK.search(text)
             if m and m.group(3):
                 el2 = etree.Element('code')

tests/test_syntax/inline/test_links.py

@@ -182,6 +182,7 @@ def test_title_containing_single_backtick(self):
             """<p><a href="link">some `test</a></p>"""
         )
 
+
 class TestReferenceLinks(TestCase):
 
     def test_ref_link(self):
@@ -487,7 +488,6 @@ def test_ref_link_with_containing_monospaced_text(self):
             """<p><a href="http://example.com"><code>Text</code> after</a></p>"""
         )
 
-
     def test_ref_link_with_single_backtick(self):
         self.assertMarkdownRenders(
             self.dedent(