This link has been bookmarked by 809 people . It was first bookmarked on 02 Mar 2006, by Aleksey N Stepin.
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When you do want to insert a
<br />break tag using Markdown, you end a line with two or more spaces, then type return. -
It’s important to note that the actual numbers you use to mark the list have no effect on the HTML output Markdown produces.
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If list items are separated by blank lines, Markdown will wrap the items in
<p>tags in the HTML output -
To put a code block within a list item, the code block needs to be indented twice — 8 spaces or two tabs
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To produce a code block in Markdown, simply indent every line of the block by at least 4 spaces or 1 tab
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One level of indentation — 4 spaces or 1 tab — is removed from each line of the code block
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Within a code block, ampersands (
&) and angle brackets (<and>) are automatically converted into HTML entities -
With a code span, ampersands and angle brackets are encoded as HTML entities automatically, which makes it easy to include example HTML tags
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block-level HTML elements — e.g.
<div>,<table>,<pre>,<p>, etc. — must be separated from surrounding content by blank lines, and the start and end tags of the block should not be indented with tabs or spaces. -
Unlike block-level HTML tags, Markdown syntax is processed within span-level tags.
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Optionally, you may “close” atx-style headers. T
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the lines of a code block are interpreted literally. Markdown wraps a code block in both
<pre>and<code>tags. -
To produce a code block in Markdown, simply indent every line of the block by at least 4 spaces or 1 tab. For example, given this input:
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Regular Markdown syntax is not processed within code blocks
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Markdown supports two style of links: inline and reference.
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Reference-style
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[id]: http://example.com/ "Optional Title Here"
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link names
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inline and reference.
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![Alt text][id]
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Readability, however, is emphasized above all else. A Markdown-formatted document should be publishable as-is, as plain text, without looking like it’s been marked up with tags or formatting instructions.
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HTML is a publishing format; Markdown is a writing format. Thus, Markdown’s formatting syntax only addresses issues that can be conveyed in plain text.
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For any markup that is not covered by Markdown’s syntax, you simply use HTML itself. There’s no need to preface it or delimit it to indicate that you’re switching from Markdown to HTML; you just use the tags.
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The only restrictions are that block-level HTML elements — e.g.
<div>,<table>,<pre>,<p>, etc. — must be separated from surrounding content by blank lines, and the start and end tags of the block should not be indented with tabs or spaces. Markdown is smart enough not to add extra (unwanted)<p>tags around HTML block-level tags. -
In HTML, there are two characters that demand special treatment:
<and&. Left angle brackets are used to start tags; ampersands are used to denote HTML entities. If you want to use them as literal characters, you must escape them as entities, e.g.<, and&. -
Markdown allows you to use these characters naturally, taking care of all the necessary escaping for you.
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However, inside Markdown code spans and blocks, angle brackets and ampersands are always encoded automatically. This makes it easy to use Markdown to write about HTML code. (As opposed to raw HTML, which is a terrible format for writing about HTML syntax, because every single
<and&in your example code needs to be escaped.)
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For any markup that is not covered by Markdown’s syntax, you simply use HTML itself. There’s no need to preface it or delimit it to indicate that you’re switching from Markdown to HTML; you just use the tags.
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Markdown supports ordered (numbered) and unordered (bulleted) lists.
Unordered lists use asterisks, pluses, and hyphens — interchangably — as list markers:
* Red * Green * Blueis equivalent to:
+ Red + Green + Blueand:
- Red - Green - BlueOrdered lists use numbers followed by periods:
1. Bird 2. McHale 3. ParishIt’s important to note that the actual numbers you use to mark the list have no effect on the HTML output Markdown produces. The HTML Markdown produces from the above list is:
<ol> <li>Bird</li> <li>McHale</li> <li>Parish</li> </ol>If you instead wrote the list in Markdown like this:
1. Bird 1. McHale 1. Parishor even:
3. Bird 1. McHale 8. Parishyou’d get the exact same HTML output. The point is, if you want to, you can use ordinal numbers in your ordered Markdown lists, so that the numbers in your source match the numbers in your published HTML. But if you want to be lazy, you don’t have to.
If you do use lazy list numbering, however, you should still start the list with the number 1. At some point in the future, Markdown may support starting ordered lists at an arbitrary number.
List markers typically start at the left margin, but may be indented by up to three spaces. List markers must be followed by one or more spaces or a tab.
To make lists look nice, you can wrap items with hanging indents:
* Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aliquam hendrerit mi posuere lectus. Vestibulum enim wisi, viverra nec, fringilla in, laoreet vitae, risus. * Donec sit amet nisl. Aliquam semper ipsum sit amet velit. Suspendisse id sem consectetuer libero luctus adipiscing.But if you want to be lazy, you don’t have to:
* Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aliquam hendrerit mi posuere lectus. Vestibulum enim wisi, viverra nec, fringilla in, laoreet vitae, risus. * Donec sit amet nisl. Aliquam semper ipsum sit amet velit. Suspendisse id sem consecte -
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HTML is a publishing format; Markdown is a writing format.
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However, inside Markdown code spans and blocks, angle brackets and ampersands are always encoded automatically.
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When you do want to insert a
<br />break tag using Markdown, you end a line with two or more spaces, then type return.
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harry palmer"Markdown: Syntax
Main Basics Syntax License Dingus
Overview
Philosophy
Inline HTML
Automatic Escaping for Special Characters
Block Elements
Paragraphs and Line Breaks
Headers
Blockquotes
Lists
Code Blocks
Horizontal Rules
Span Elements
Links
Emphasis
Code
Images
Miscellaneous
Backslash Escapes
Automatic Links
NOTE: This document is itself written using Markdown; you can see the source for it by adding ‘.text’ to the URL.
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Markdown: Syntax
Note: This document is itself written using Markdown; you can see the source for it by adding ‘.text’ to the URL.
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artem_murga"Markdown is not a replacement for HTML.The idea for Markdown is to make it easy to read, write, and edit prose. HTML is a publishing format; Markdown is a writing format"
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24 Jul 14
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Markdown is intended to be as easy-to-read and easy-to-write as is feasible.
Readability, however, is emphasized above all else.
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To this end, Markdown’s syntax is comprised entirely of punctuation characters, which punctuation characters have been carefully chosen so as to look like what they mean. E.g., asterisks around a word actually look like *emphasis*. Markdown lists look like, well, lists. Even blockquotes look like quoted passages of text, assuming you’ve ever used email.
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Markdown’s syntax is intended for one purpose: to be used as a format for writing for the web.
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Markdown is not a replacement for HTML, or even close to it. Its syntax is very small, corresponding only to a very small subset of HTML tags. The idea is not to create a syntax that makes it easier to insert HTML tags.
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HTML is a publishing format; Markdown is a writing format. Thus, Markdown’s formatting syntax only addresses issues that can be conveyed in plain text.
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For any markup that is not covered by Markdown’s syntax, you simply use HTML itself. There’s no need to preface it or delimit it to indicate that you’re switching from Markdown to HTML; you just use the tags.
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The only restrictions are that block-level HTML elements — e.g.
<div>,<table>,<pre>,<p>, etc. — must be separated from surrounding content by blank lines, and the start and end tags of the block should not be indented with tabs or spaces. Markdown is smart enough not to add extra (unwanted)<p>tags around HTML block-level tags. -
Note that Markdown formatting syntax is not processed within block-level HTML tags. E.g., you can’t use Markdown-style
*emphasis*inside an HTML block. -
Span-level HTML tags — e.g.
<span>,<cite>, or<del>— can be used anywhere in a Markdown paragraph, list item, or header. If you want, you can even use HTML tags instead of Markdown formatting; e.g. if you’d prefer to use HTML<a>or<img>tags instead of Markdown’s link or image syntax, go right ahead.Unlike block-level HTML tags, Markdown syntax is processed within span-level tags.
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Markdown allows you to use these characters naturally, taking care of all the necessary escaping for you. If you use an ampersand as part of an HTML entity, it remains unchanged; otherwise it will be translated into
&.So, if you want to include a copyright symbol in your article, you can write:
© -
Similarly, because Markdown supports inline HTML, if you use angle brackets as delimiters for HTML tags, Markdown will treat them as such.
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However, inside Markdown code spans and blocks, angle brackets and ampersands are always encoded automatically. This makes it easy to use Markdown to write about HTML code.
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The implication of the “one or more consecutive lines of text” rule is that Markdown supports “hard-wrapped” text paragraphs.
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When you do want to insert a
<br />break tag using Markdown, you end a line with two or more spaces, then type return. -
Any number of underlining
=’s or-’s will work. -
Optionally, you may “close” atx-style headers. This is purely cosmetic — you can use this if you think it looks better. The closing hashes don’t even need to match the number of hashes used to open the header. (The number of opening hashes determines the header level.) :
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Markdown allows you to be lazy and only put the
>before the first line of a hard-wrapped paragraph: -
Blockquotes can be nested (i.e. a blockquote-in-a-blockquote) by adding additional levels of
>: -
Blockquotes can contain other Markdown elements, including headers, lists, and code blocks:
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Any decent text editor should make email-style quoting easy.
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It’s important to note that the actual numbers you use to mark the list have no effect on the HTML output Markdown produces.
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The point is, if you want to, you can use ordinal numbers in your ordered Markdown lists, so that the numbers in your source match the numbers in your published HTML. But if you want to be lazy, you don’t have to.
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List markers typically start at the left margin, but may be indented by up to three spaces. List markers must be followed by one or more spaces or a tab.
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To make lists look nice, you can wrap items with hanging indents:
-
If list items are separated by blank lines, Markdown will wrap the items in
<p>tags in the HTML output. -
List items may consist of multiple paragraphs. Each subsequent paragraph in a list item must be indented by either 4 spaces or one tab:
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To put a blockquote within a list item, the blockquote’s
>delimiters need to be indented: -
To put a code block within a list item, the code block needs to be indented twice — 8 spaces or two tabs:
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In other words, a number-period-space sequence at the beginning of a line. To avoid this, you can backslash-escape the period:
1986\. What a great season. -
One level of indentation — 4 spaces or 1 tab — is removed from each line of the code block.
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Within a code block, ampersands (
&) and angle brackets (<and>) are automatically converted into HTML entities. This makes it very easy to include example HTML source code using Markdown -
Regular Markdown syntax is not processed within code blocks. E.g., asterisks are just literal asterisks within a code block. This means it’s also easy to use Markdown to write about Markdown’s own syntax.
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You can produce a horizontal rule tag (
<hr />) by placing three or more hyphens, asterisks, or underscores on a line by themselves. -
If you’re referring to a local resource on the same server, you can use relative paths:
See my [About](/about/) page for details. -
Then, anywhere in the document, you define your link label like this, on a line by itself:
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Square brackets containing the link identifier (optionally indented from the left margin using up to three spaces);
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optionally followed by a title attribute for the link, enclosed in double or single quotes, or enclosed in parentheses.
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You can put the title attribute on the next line and use extra spaces or tabs for padding, which tends to look better with longer URLs:
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Link definitions are only used for creating links during Markdown processing, and are stripped from your document in the HTML output.
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The implicit link name shortcut allows you to omit the name of the link, in which case the link text itself is used as the name. Just use an empty set of square brackets — e.g., to link the word “Google” to the google.com web site, you could simply write:
[Google][] -
Because link names may contain spaces, this shortcut even works for multiple words in the link text:
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Link definitions can be placed anywhere in your Markdown document. I tend to put them immediately after each paragraph in which they’re used, but if you want, you can put them all at the end of your document, sort of like footnotes.
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The point of reference-style links is not that they’re easier to write. The point is that with reference-style links, your document source is vastly more readable.
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Emphasis can be used in the middle of a word:
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But if you surround an
*or_with spaces, it’ll be treated as a literal asterisk or underscore. -
To produce a literal asterisk or underscore at a position where it would otherwise be used as an emphasis delimiter, you can backslash escape it:
\*this text is surrounded by literal asterisks\* -
To include a literal backtick character within a code span, you can use multiple backticks as the opening and closing delimiters:
``There is a literal backtick (`) here.`` -
The backtick delimiters surrounding a code span may include spaces — one after the opening, one before the closing. This allows you to place literal backtick characters at the beginning or end of a code span:
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As of this writing, Markdown has no syntax for specifying the dimensions of an image; if this is important to you, you can simply use regular HTML
<img>tags. -
Markdown supports a shortcut style for creating “automatic” links for URLs and email addresses: simply surround the URL or email address with angle brackets. What this means is that if you want to show the actual text of a URL or email address, and also have it be a clickable link, you can do this:
<http://example.com/> -
Automatic links for email addresses work similarly, except that Markdown will also perform a bit of randomized decimal and hex entity-encoding to help obscure your address from address-harvesting spambots. For example, Markdown will turn this:
<address@example.com>into something like this:
<a href="mailto:addre ss@example.co m">address@exa mple.com</a> -
Markdown allows you to use backslash escapes to generate literal characters which would otherwise have special meaning in Markdown’s formatting syntax.
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AT&T
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See my [About](/about/) page for details.
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HTML is a publishing format; Markdown is a writing format.
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The only restrictions are that block-level HTML elements — e.g.
<div>,<table>,<pre>,<p>, etc. — must be separated from surrounding content by blank lines, and the start and end tags of the block should not be indented with tabs or spaces. -
Span-level HTML tags — e.g.
<span>,<cite>, or<del>— can be used anywhere in a Markdown paragraph, list item, or header.
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Block Elements
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Span Elements
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Miscellaneous
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Inline HTML
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restrictions are that block-level HTML elements — e.g.
<div>,<table>,<pre>,<p>, etc. — must be separated from surrounding content by blank lines, and the start and end tags of the block should not be indented with tabs or spaces. Markdown is smart enough not to add extra (unwanted)<p>tags around HTML block-level tags. -
This is a regular paragraph. <table> <tr> <td>Foo</td> </tr> </table> This is another regular paragraph.
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Note that Markdown formatting syntax is not processed within block-level HTML tags
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Span-level HTML tags — e.g.
<span>,<cite>, or<del>— can be used anywhere in a Markdown paragraph, list item, or header. -
Automatic Escaping for Special Characters
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if you want to link to:
http://images.google.com/images?num=30&q=larry+birdyou need to encode the URL as:
http://images.google.com/images?num=30&q=larry+bird -
If you use an ampersand as part of an HTML entity, it remains unchanged; otherwise it will be translated into
& -
So, if you want to include a copyright symbol in your article, you can write:
©and Markdown will leave it alone. But if you write:
AT&TMarkdown will translate it to:
AT&T -
if you write:
4 < 5Markdown will translate it to:
4 < 5 -
However, inside Markdown code spans and blocks, angle brackets and ampersands are always encoded automatically
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Block Elements
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Paragraphs and Line Breaks
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Headers
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For example:
This is an H1 ============= This is an H2 ------------- -
For example:
# This is an H1 ## This is an H2 ###### This is an H6 -
(The number of opening hashes determines the header level.) :
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# This is an H1 # ## This is an H2 ## ### This is an H3 ######
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Blockquotes
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It looks best if you hard wrap the text and put a
>before every line: -
> This is a blockquote with two paragraphs. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, > consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aliquam hendrerit mi posuere lectus. > Vestibulum enim wisi, viverra nec, fringilla in, laoreet vitae, risus. > > Donec sit amet nisl. Aliquam semper ipsum sit amet velit. Suspendisse > id sem consectetuer libero luctus adipiscing.
-
Blockquotes can be nested (i.e. a blockquote-in-a-blockquote) by adding additional levels of
>:> This is the first level of quoting. > > > This is nested blockquote. > > Back to the first level. -
Blockquotes can contain other Markdown elements, including headers, lists, and code blocks:
> ## This is a header. > > 1. This is the first list item. > 2. This is the second list item. > > Here's some example code: > > return shell_exec("echo $input | $markdown_script"); -
Lists
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Unordered lists use asterisks, pluses, and hyphens — interchangably — as list markers:
-
Red * Green * Blueis equivalent to:
+ Red + Green + Blueand:
- Red - Green - Blue -
Ordered lists use numbers followed by periods:
-
1. Bird 2. McHale 3. Parish
-
To make lists look nice, you can wrap items with hanging indents:
* Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aliquam hendrerit mi posuere lectus. Vestibulum enim wisi, viverra nec, fringilla in, laoreet vitae, risus. * Donec sit amet nisl. Aliquam semper ipsum sit amet velit. Suspendisse id sem consectetuer libero luctus adipiscing. -
If list items are separated by blank lines, Markdown will wrap the items in
<p>tags in the HTML -
or example, this input:
* Bird * Magicwill turn into:
<ul> <li>Bird</li> <li>Magic</li> </ul>But this:
* Bird * Magicwill turn into:
<ul> <li><p>Bird</p></li> <li><p>Magic</p></li> </ul> -
List items may consist of multiple paragraphs. Each subsequent paragraph in a list item must be indented by either 4 spaces or one tab:
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1. This is a list item with two paragraphs. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aliquam hendrerit mi posuere lectus. Vestibulum enim wisi, viverra nec, fringilla in, laoreet vitae, risus. Donec sit amet nisl. Aliquam semper ipsum sit amet velit. 2. Suspendisse id sem consectetuer libero luctus adipiscing.
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To put a blockquote within a list item, the blockquote’s
>delimiters need to be indented: -
* A list item with a blockquote: > This is a blockquote > inside a list ite
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To put a code block within a list item, the code block needs to be indented twice — 8 spaces or two tabs:
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* A list item with a code block: <code goes here>
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It’s worth noting that it’s possible to trigger an ordered list by accident, by writing something like this:
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1986. What a great season.
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In other words, a number-period-space sequence at the beginning of a line. To avoid this, you can backslash-escape the period:
1986\. What a great season. -
Code Blocks
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To produce a code block in Markdown, simply indent every line of the block by at least 4 spaces
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For example, given this input:
This is a normal paragraph: This is a code block.Markdown will generate:
<p>This is a normal paragraph:</p> <pre><code>This is a code block. </code></pre>One level of indentation — 4 spaces or 1 tab — is removed from each line of the code block. For example, this:
Here is an example of AppleScript: tell application "Foo" beep end tellwill turn into:
<p>Here is an example of AppleScript:</p> <pre><code>tell application "Foo" beep end tell </code></pre> -
A code block continues until it reaches a line that is not indented (or the end of the article).
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Horizontal Rules
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Span Elements
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Links
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Emphasis
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Code
To
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Images
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Miscellaneous
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Backslash Escapes
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24 Feb 14
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19 Feb 14
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11 Feb 14
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08 Feb 14
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Unlike block-level HTML tags, Markdown syntax is processed within span-level tags.
-
If you use an ampersand as part of an HTML entity, it remains unchanged; otherwise it will be translated into
&
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04 Feb 14
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Markdown is not a replacement for HTML, or even close to it. Its syntax is very small, corresponding only to a very small subset of HTML tags. The idea is not to create a syntax that makes it easier to insert HTML tags. In my opinion, HTML tags are already easy to insert. The idea for Markdown is to make it easy to read, write, and edit prose. HTML is a publishing format; Markdown is a writing format. Thus, Markdown’s formatting syntax only addresses issues that can be conveyed in plain text.
-
For any markup that is not covered by Markdown’s syntax, you simply use HTML itself. There’s no need to preface it or delimit it to indicate that you’re switching from Markdown to HTML; you just use the tags.
The only restrictions are that block-level HTML elements — e.g.
<div>,<table>,<pre>,<p>, etc. — must be separated from surrounding content by blank lines, and the start and end tags of the block should not be indented with tabs or spaces. Markdown is smart enough not to add extra (unwanted)<p>tags around HTML block-level tags. -
Unlike block-level HTML tags, Markdown syntax is processed within span-level tags.
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08 Jan 14
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26 Dec 13
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Philosophy
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Inline HTML
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the single biggest source of inspiration for Markdown’s syntax is the format of plain text email
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The only restrictions are that block-level HTML elements
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Automatic Escaping for Special Characters
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bedeviling
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Block Elements
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A paragraph is simply one or more consecutive lines of text, separated by one or more blank lines
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Headers
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Blockquotes
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Lists
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Code Blocks
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Horizontal Rules
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Span Elements
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13 Dec 13
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06 Dec 13
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03 Dec 13
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07 Nov 13
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