Markdown – An

IntroductionA brief introductory tutorial on Markdown. Markdown is a plain textformat for writing structured documents, based on conventions used forindicating formatting in email and usenet posts. It is a light weight and easyto use syntax for styling.

@VenkiNarayanan

What is Markdown?

• Markdown is a way to style text on the web.

• It helps you to control the display of the document by formatting words as

bold or italic etc.

• Markdown is just a regular text with few non-alphabetic characters thrown

in.

• Markdown text can be converted to HTML and other formats.

Styling Text

*This text will be Bold*

**This text will be Italic**

This text will be Bold

This text will be Italic

In the above example we are

marking text as italic using **

and bold using *

• Use “*” or “-” to mark text as italic.

• Use “**” to mark text as bold.

• Use “~~” to strikethrough text.

Ordered Lists

• You define ordered lists in Markdown by prefixing the number.

• To define a sub list within the main list, then start sub list by putting two

spaces.

1. Item 1

2. Item 2

3. Item 3

1. Item 1

2. Item 2

1. Sub item 1

2. Sub item 2

Unordered Lists

• For unordered bulleted lists, start the line with star “*” or dash “-”.

• To define a sub list within the main list, then start sub list by putting two

spaces, similar to ordered lists..

* Item 1

* Item 2

* Item 3

• Item 1

• Item 2

• Item 3

Links and Images

• You can insert images using the following format: 

• Example: ![Image of

Yaktocat](https://octodex.github.com/images/yaktocat.png)

• You can insert links using the following format: [Alt Text](url)

Reference Links

• Reference link refers to another place in the document.

• Advantage of reference link is that multiple links to the same place only need to be updated once.

• Reference link is defined by providing the same tag name wrapped in brackets, followed by a colon, followed by the link.

• In above example, all references to [a fun place] would be replaced by the link www.zombo.com

• Same approach can also be used for Reference images by adding the exclamation mark

Do you want to [see something fun][a fun place]?

[a fun place]: www.zombo.com

Do you want to see something fun?

Headers

• Sometimes it is useful to have different levels of headings to structure your documents.

• Start lines with “#” to create headings.

• Multiple “#” denotes different heading levels.

• It is possible to have up to six different heading sizes.

### Third Level Heading Third Level Heading

Block Quotes

• If you like to call special attention to a quote from another source, use the

“>” character before the line.

> Cofee. The finest organic suspension ever devised…I beat the borg

with it.

> - Captain Janeway

Inline Code

• You can style inline code with Markdown.

• If you have inline code blocks, wrap them in backthicks:

‘var example = true` var example = true;

• You can define multi line code blocks. Use triple backticks “```” to format

text as own distinct block.

Github flavored Markdown

• There is a Github flavored Markdown which provides more markdown

options.

• More details here - https://help.github.com/articles/github-flavored-

markdown/

References

• Markdown Tutorial - http://markdowntutorial.com/

• Markdown - http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/

• Mastering Markdown - https://guides.github.com/features/mastering-

markdown/