Markdown Syntax
This document describes some of the more important parts of Markdown (for writers, that is). There's a lot more to the syntax than is mentioned here, though. To get the full syntax documentation, go to John Gruber's Markdown Syntax page
Headers
For top-level headers underline the text with equal signs. For second-level headers use dashes to underline.
This is an H1 =============
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This is an H1 |
This is an H2 -------------
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This is an H2 |
If you would rather, you can prefix headers with a hash (#) symbol instead. The number of hash symbols indicates the header level. For example, a single hash indicates a header level of one while two indicates the second header level:
# This is H1
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This is an H1 |
## This is H2
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This is an H2 |
### This is H3
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This is an H3 |
Which you choose is a matter of style. Whichever you thinks looks better in the text document. In both cases, the final, fully formatted, document looks the same.
Paragraphs
Paragraphs are surrounded by blank lines.
This is paragraph one.
This is paragraph two.
Links
There are two parts to every link.
The first is the actual text that the user will see and it is surrounded by brackets.
The second is address of the page you wish to link to and it is surrounded in parenthesis.
[link text](http://example.com/)
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link text |
Formatting
To indicate bold text surround the text with two star (*) symbols or two underscore (_) symbols:
**This is bold**
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This is bold |
__This is also bold__
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This is also bold |
To indicate italicized text surround the text with a single star (*) symbol or underscore (_) symbol:
*This is italics*
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This is italics |
_This is also italics_
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This is also italics |
To indicate italicized and bold text surround the text with three star (*) symbol or underscore (_) symbol:
***This is bold and italics***
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This is italics |
___This is also bold and italics___
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This is italics |
Blockquotes
To create an indented area use the right angle bracket (>) character before each line to be included in the blockquote.
> This is part of a blockquote. > This is part of the same blockquote.
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This is part of a blockquote. |
Rather than putting it in front of each line to include in the block quote you can put it at the beginning and end the quote with a newline.
> This is part of a blockquote. This continues the blockquote even though there's no bracket. The blank line ends the blockquote.
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This is part of a blockquote. The blank line ends the blockquote. |
Lists
To create a numbered list in Markdown, prefix each item in the list with a number followed by a period and space. The number you use actually doesn't matter.
1. Item 1 2. Item 2 3. Item 3
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To create a bulleted list, prefix each item in the list with a star (*) character.
* A list item * Another list item * A third list item
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A Lot More
There's a lot more to the Markdown syntax than is mentioned here. But for creative writers, this covers a lot of the necessities. To find out more about Markdown than you'd ever want to really know, go to the Markdown page where it all started.