Markdown is intended to be as easy-to-read and easy-to-write as is feasible.
\nReadability, however, is emphasized above all else. A Markdown-formatted\ndocument should be publishable as-is, as plain text, without looking\nlike it's been marked up with tags or formatting instructions. While\nMarkdown's syntax has been influenced by several existing text-to-HTML\nfilters -- including Setext, atx, Textile, reStructuredText,\nGrutatext, and EtText -- the single biggest source of\ninspiration for Markdown's syntax is the format of plain text email.
\nA paragraph is simply one or more consecutive lines of text, separated\nby one or more blank lines. (A blank line is any line that looks like a\nblank line -- a line containing nothing but spaces or tabs is considered\nblank.) Normal paragraphs should not be indented with spaces or tabs.
\nThe implication of the \"one or more consecutive lines of text\" rule is\nthat Markdown supports \"hard-wrapped\" text paragraphs. This differs\nsignificantly from most other text-to-HTML formatters (including Movable\nType's \"Convert Line Breaks\" option) which translate every line break\ncharacter in a paragraph into a <br /> tag.
When you do want to insert a <br /> break tag using Markdown, you\nend a line with two or more spaces, then type return.
Markdown supports two styles of headers, [Setext] [1] and [atx] [2].
\nOptionally, you may \"close\" atx-style headers. This is purely\ncosmetic -- you can use this if you think it looks better. The\nclosing hashes don't even need to match the number of hashes\nused to open the header. (The number of opening hashes\ndetermines the header level.)
\nMarkdown uses email-style > characters for blockquoting. If you're\nfamiliar with quoting passages of text in an email message, then you\nknow how to create a blockquote in Markdown. It looks best if you hard\nwrap the text and put a > before every line:
\n\nThis is a blockquote with two paragraphs. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet,\nconsectetuer adipiscing elit. Aliquam hendrerit mi posuere lectus.\nVestibulum enim wisi, viverra nec, fringilla in, laoreet vitae, risus.
\nDonec sit amet nisl. Aliquam semper ipsum sit amet velit. Suspendisse\nid sem consectetuer libero luctus adipiscing.
\n
Markdown allows you to be lazy and only put the > before the first\nline of a hard-wrapped paragraph:
\n\nThis is a blockquote with two paragraphs. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet,\nconsectetuer adipiscing elit. Aliquam hendrerit mi posuere lectus.\nVestibulum enim wisi, viverra nec, fringilla in, laoreet vitae, risus.
\n
\n\nDonec sit amet nisl. Aliquam semper ipsum sit amet velit. Suspendisse\nid sem consectetuer libero luctus adipiscing.
\n
Blockquotes can be nested (i.e. a blockquote-in-a-blockquote) by\nadding additional levels of >:
\n\nThis is the first level of quoting.
\n\n\nThis is nested blockquote.
\nBack to the first level.
\n
Blockquotes can contain other Markdown elements, including headers, lists,\nand code blocks:
\n\n\nThis is a header.
\n\n
\n- This is the first list item.
\n- This is the second list item.
\nHere's some example code:
\n\nreturn shell_exec("echo $input | $markdown_script");
Any decent text editor should make email-style quoting easy. For\nexample, with BBEdit, you can make a selection and choose Increase\nQuote Level from the Text menu.
\nMarkdown supports ordered (numbered) and unordered (bulleted) lists.
\nUnordered lists use asterisks, pluses, and hyphens -- interchangably\n-- as list markers:
\nis equivalent to:
\nand:
\nOrdered lists use numbers followed by periods:
\nIt's important to note that the actual numbers you use to mark the\nlist have no effect on the HTML output Markdown produces. The HTML\nMarkdown produces from the above list is:
\nIf you instead wrote the list in Markdown like this:
\nor even:
\nyou'd get the exact same HTML output. The point is, if you want to,\nyou can use ordinal numbers in your ordered Markdown lists, so that\nthe numbers in your source match the numbers in your published HTML.\nBut if you want to be lazy, you don't have to.
\nTo make lists look nice, you can wrap items with hanging indents:
\nBut if you want to be lazy, you don't have to:
\nList items may consist of multiple paragraphs. Each subsequent\nparagraph in a list item must be indented by either 4 spaces\nor one tab:
\nThis is a list item with two paragraphs. Lorem ipsum dolor\nsit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aliquam hendrerit\nmi posuere lectus.
\nVestibulum enim wisi, viverra nec, fringilla in, laoreet\nvitae, risus. Donec sit amet nisl. Aliquam semper ipsum\nsit amet velit.
\nIt looks nice if you indent every line of the subsequent\nparagraphs, but here again, Markdown will allow you to be\nlazy:
\nThis is a list item with two paragraphs.
\nThis is the second paragraph in the list item. You're
\nonly required to indent the first line. Lorem ipsum dolor\nsit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit.
\nTo put a blockquote within a list item, the blockquote's >\ndelimiters need to be indented:
A list item with a blockquote:
\n\n\nThis is a blockquote\ninside a list item.
\n
To put a code block within a list item, the code block needs\nto be indented twice -- 8 spaces or two tabs:
\nA list item with a code block:
\n\nPre-formatted code blocks are used for writing about programming or\nmarkup source code. Rather than forming normal paragraphs, the lines\nof a code block are interpreted literally. Markdown wraps a code block\nin both <pre> and <code> tags.
To produce a code block in Markdown, simply indent every line of the\nblock by at least 4 spaces or 1 tab.
\nimport React from \"react\"\nimport { Link, useStaticQuery, graphql } from \"gatsby\"\nimport Navigation from \"../components/navigation\"\n\nexport default ({ children }) => {\n const data = useStaticQuery(\n graphql`\n query {\n site {\n siteMetadata {\n title\n }\n }\n }\n `\n )\n return (\n <div className=\"site-wrapper\">\n <header className=\"site-header\">\n <div className=\"site-title\">\n <Link to=\"/\">{data.site.siteMetadata.title}</Link>\n </div>\n <Navigation />\n </header>\n {children}\n </div>\n )\n}This is a normal paragraph:
\nThis is a code block.
Here is an example of AppleScript:
\ntell application "Foo"\n beep\nend tellA code block continues until it reaches a line that is not indented\n(or the end of the article).
\nWithin a code block, ampersands (&) and angle brackets (< and >)\nare automatically converted into HTML entities. This makes it very\neasy to include example HTML source code using Markdown -- just paste\nit and indent it, and Markdown will handle the hassle of encoding the\nampersands and angle brackets. For example, this:
<div class="footer">\n © 2004 Foo Corporation\n</div>Regular Markdown syntax is not processed within code blocks. E.g.,\nasterisks are just literal asterisks within a code block. This means\nit's also easy to use Markdown to write about Markdown's own syntax.
\ntell application \"Foo\"\n beep\nend tellMarkdown supports two style of links: inline and reference.
\nIn both styles, the link text is delimited by [square brackets].
\nTo create an inline link, use a set of regular parentheses immediately\nafter the link text's closing square bracket. Inside the parentheses,\nput the URL where you want the link to point, along with an optional\ntitle for the link, surrounded in quotes. For example:
\nThis is an example inline link.
\nThis link has no title attribute.
\nMarkdown treats asterisks (*) and underscores (_) as indicators of\nemphasis. Text wrapped with one * or _ will be wrapped with an\nHTML <em> tag; double *'s or _'s will be wrapped with an HTML\n<strong> tag. E.g., this input:
single asterisks
\nsingle underscores
\ndouble asterisks
\ndouble underscores
\nTo indicate a span of code, wrap it with backtick quotes (`).\nUnlike a pre-formatted code block, a code span indicates code within a\nnormal paragraph. For example:
Use the printf() function.