Markdown Basics

Markdown is an easy-to-read and easy-to-use syntax for styling all forms of writing.

Paragraphs

A paragraph is simply one or more consecutive lines of text, separated by one or more blank lines. Normal paragraphs should not be indented with spaces or tabs.

If you want to insert a <br /> break tag using Markdown, end a line with two or more spaces, then type return.

Headings

Create a heading by adding one or more # symbols before your heading text. The number of # you use will determine the size of the heading.

# This is an H1
## This is an H2
###### This is an H6

Blockquotes

Indicate blockquotes with a >.

To quote Jean-Luc Picard:
> Make it so.

Blockquotes can be nested by adding additional levels of >.

> This is the first level of quoting.
>
> > This is a nested blockquote.
>
> Back to the first level.

Bold and Italics

You can make text bold or italic. Both bold and italic can use either an asterisk * or an underscore _ to style text.

**bold** or *italic*
__bold__ or _italic_

You can combine both bold and italic to nest one within the other.

**The same character _must_ be used to open and close bold or italic text.**

Lists

Markdown supports unordered (bulleted) and ordered (numbered) lists.

Unordered lists

Make unordered (bulleted) lists by prepending list items with an asterisk * or hyphen -.

* Item
* Item
* Item

- Item
- Item
- Item

Lists can also contain multiple paragraphs. Indent each new parapgrah by 4 spaces or 1 tab.

*   A list item.

    With multiple paragraphs.

*   Another item in the same list.

Ordered lists

Make ordered lists by using regular numbers, followed by periods, as list marker.

1. Item one
2. Item two
3. Item three

Nested lists

You can nest lists by indenting list items by four spaces.

1. Item one
    1. First nested item
    2. Second nested item
2. Item two
    * Unordered nested item
        1. Ordered item
        2. Second ordered item
        3. Consider creating a new list
    * Another unordered nested item
3. Item three

Tables

While the core Markdown specification does not support tables, they can often be useful. The following example shows how a table can be created.

| Heading 1 | Heading 2 | Heading 3 |
| --------- | :-------: | :-------: |
| Hello     | Very cool | Hello     |
| More data | Spanning Data ||

Which generates the following table

Heading 1	Heading 2	Heading 3
Hello	Very cool	Hello
More data	Spanning Data

The requirments for tables are:

• There must be at least one | per line
• The second line must contain only |,-,:,. or spaces
• A : can be used to the right of the column - to right justify the column contents, or at each end to center the column contents
• Cell content must only be on one line
• No blank lines
• Columns are seperated by |
• The first line of the table, and the alignment/divider line, must start at the beginning of the line

Links

Markdown supports two styles for creating links: inline and reference. Use square brackets [ ] to delimit the text you want to turn into a link. Titles are optional.

Inline links

Inline-style links use parentheses immediately after the link text.

An [example](http://url.com/ "Title")

Reference links

Reference-style links allow you to refer to your links by names, which you define elsewhere in your document:

Here at [Codebots][1], we use [Focused][2] as our Markdown editor of choice.

[1]: https://codebots.co.uk/ "Codebots"
[2]: https://codebots.co.uk/focused/ "Focused"

Email links

An example <email@address.com> link

Images

Image syntax is very much like link syntax. As with links, titles are optional.

If any alt text is present, a visible caption is generated in HTML below the image using the <figure> and <figcaption> elements available in HTML5.

Inline-style images

![alt caption text](/path/to/img.jpg "Title")

Reference-style images

![alt caption text][id]

[id]: /path/to/img.jpg "Title"

Code

Inline code

In a regular paragraph, you can create <code> span by wrapping text in backtick ` quotes.

An example of inline `<code>`

Any ampersands & and angle brackets < > will automatically be translated into HTML entities.

Fenced code blocks

To specify an entire block of pre-formatted code, indent every line of the block by 4 spaces or 1 tab.

You can also create a fenced code block by wrapping the code with 3 backticks ```.

```
An example fenced code block
```

Abbreviations

Abbreviations are defined using the following syntax.

*[HTML]: HyperText Markup Language
*[W3C]:  World Wide Web Consortium

To use the abbreviation simply place text you placed between the

[

]

in your text.

Horizontal rules

Make a horizontal rule using three or more dashes - or asterisks *.

---

* * *

- - - -