Toon Claes [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

I am not sure about the last two, i.e. things that are not dash+option
appearing as enumeration labels, though (and Cc'ing Jean-Noël to ask
for help).

Well, this gave me a nice opportunity to test Jean-Noël proposed docs
linter[1].

You'd need to be careful and account for the possibility that a
just-off-the-press linter may not be complete, though ;-)

    $ make check-docs
    [snip
    git-last-modified.adoc:25: '-r::' synopsis style and definition list item not backquoted
    git-last-modified.adoc:26: '--recursive::' synopsis style and definition list item not backquoted
    git-last-modified.adoc:30: '-t::' synopsis style and definition list item not backquoted
    git-last-modified.adoc:31: '--show-trees::' synopsis style and definition list item not backquoted

It seems only dashed options should be backquoted.

My go-to example has been git-commit.adoc where it has things like:

    `--`::
            Do not interpret any more arguments as options.

    `<pathspec>...`::
            When _<pathspec>_ is given on the command line, commit the contents of
            the files that match the pathspec without recording the changes
            already added to the index. The contents of these files are also
            staged for the next commit on top of what have been staged before.