Basic Markdown

What is markdown?

Each 'page' or doc is really just a markdown file. A markdown file is just a text file with some additional rules.

Start by either opening a markdown file in your basic text editor (i.e. notepad), or by creating a new one by opening a basic text editor and saving the file with the extention .md

Basic Formatting

To get regular text, type it just as your would normally. To format your text, use the following rules:

• to bold text, curround it with two asterisks
  • **example** -> example
• to italicize text, surround it with a single asterisk
  • *example* -> example
• to put text into a 'code format' (like my examples above), surround it with ` (NOTE: this is NOT an apostrophe, this is a backtick, which is usually found to the left of your '1' key on your keyboard.
  • `example` -> example
• to make a horizontal line (to divide the page) use muleiple hyphens
  • ----- will make a line
• to make a non-numbered list, use an asterisk, hyphen, or plus sign as the 'bullet points'. They must be followed by a space
  • * example or - example or + example will all make a bullet list item
• to make a numbered list, use a number, followed by a period followed by a space
  • 1. example
• to 'quote' a line (i.e. indent it and make it stand out) put a > in front of the line
  • > paragraph here
  • you can use multple to indent further or 'nest' quotes i.e. >>
  • you can put it on many lines in a row to make a 'block quote'
• to make a title, put a # at the beginning of the line. The more #s, the smaller the title
  • # Title
  • ## Subtitle
  • #### Quite a Small Title

tip

Want to learn more? Need more advanced formatting? See Advanced Markdown