Quick Guide to Markdown

Markdown is a fast and easy way to create formatted text—with headings, paragraphs, links, and the like—in a plain text editor.

You can use Markdown to write software documentation, blog notes, or your next best-selling novel.

It has a simple, intuitive syntax that’s both easy to write and easy to understand. Markdown is also easy to learn—here’s a quick guide that will help you with that.

Headings

To create a heading, add one or more hash signs (#) before a line of text.

# Heading level 1

## Heading level 2

### Heading level 3

#### Heading level 4

##### Heading level 5

###### Heading level 6

Result:

Paragraphs

If you want to create paragraphs, separate portions of text with a blank line.

Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.

For Lucy had her work cut out for her.

Result:

Line breaks

To add a line break, type two or more spaces at the end of the line and press Enter.

Emphasis

You can add emphasis using asterisks or underscores.

Italic

For an italic typeface, add one asterisk or underscore before and after a text.

This is some *italic text*.

This is some more _italic text_.

Result:

Bold

To bold a word or phrase, add two asterisks or underscores before and after the text.

This is some **bold text**.

This is some more __bold text__.

Result:

Lists

You can create both ordered and unordered lists.

Unordered lists

To create an unordered list, start each line with a dash (-), an asterisk (*), or a plus sign (+). You can create a nested list by indenting lines.

- First item
- Second item
- Third item

* First item
* Second item
* Third item

+ First item
+ Second item
+ Third item

- First item
- Second item
- Third item
    - Indented item
    - Indented item

Result:

Ordered lists

To create an ordered list, start each line with a number followed by a full stop. You can create a nested list by indenting lines.

1. First item
2. Second item
3. Third item
4. Fourth item

1. First item
2. Second item
3. Third item
4. Fourth item
    4.1. Indented item
    4.2. Indented item

Result:

Links

If you want to create a link, enclose a text to be displayed in square brackets and follow it immediately with a URL in round brackets.

[Example website](https://example.com)

Result:

Images

To add an image, type an exclamation mark (!) and follow it by an alt text in square brackets and the image URL in round brackets.

![Markdown logo](images/markdown-logo.png)

Result:

Blockquotes

To create a blockquote, start a paragraph with a > sign.

> What a lark! What a plunge!

Result:

Tables

If you want to insert a table, add three or more dashes (-) to create column headers and use pipes (|) to separate each column. Optionally, you can add pipes on either side of the table.

| Header | Header | Header |
| ------ | ------ | ------ |
| Item   | Item   | Item   |
| Item   | Item   | Item   |
| Item   | Item   | Item   |

Result:

Inline code

You can denote a portion of text as code by enclosing it in backticks (`).

Type `git add .` in the command line.

Result:

Code blocks

To create a code block, add three backticks (```) on the lines before and after the code block.

```
<div>
    <p>Hello world!</p>
</div>
```

Result:

Resources

If you want to learn more about Markdown, here are a couple of useful resources:

• Short Markdown tutorial
• Markdown cheat sheet