The is a summary of the official Markdown syntax document.
You can put real HTML anywhere in a Markdown document, but block-level elements (div, table, pre, p) need a blank line before and after. Also, markdown syntax inside HTML is not processed.
& and <, (and many other special characters) are automatically translated to HTML entities (&).
Paragraphs are separated by blank lines.
Non-paragraph line breaks (<br />) can be made by putting 2 spaces after the line.
Header H1 ========= Header H2 --------- # Header H1 # ## Header H2 ## ### Header H3 ### #### Header H4 #### > A blockquote > > A nested blockquote * Bulleted list * Bulleted list * Bulleted list 1. Numbered list 1 2. Numbered list Sub-paragraphs within list items must be indented 4 spaces. 2. Numbered list (actual numbers don't matter) Use *single asterisks* or _underscores_ for <em>. Use **double asterisks** or __doubled underscores__ for <strong>. A horizontal rule: --------------- `backticks` are for <code>. Indent pre-formatted blocks 4 spaces. The carrot-ed URL <http://paulgorman.org> will be hyperlinked. [This](http://paulgorman.org) will be hyperlinked. A link within the same document works like [this][foo], and links to the paragraph below. [foo]: This is the target of a link withing the same document.  
Use a backslash to escape any literal character that's wrongly interpreted as markdown.
Besides `markdown.pl`, a number of processors are available, like Pandoc and kramdown. The other processors support extensions for the markdown syntax.
Definition lists are like this: A term : The definition Another term : Another definition
Pandoc outputs HTML like pandoc -S5 input.txt -o output.html
(-S
outputs dash and ellipses as entities, and -5
generates HTML5 instead of 4), or LaTeX like pandoc input.txt -o output.tex
. The -s
option adds standard headers and footers to the output, rather than a fragment. The -t
and -f
explicitly specify the to and from formats, like pandoc -f html -t makrdown input.html
to output HTML as markdown.
If no output file is specified, results go to stdout
.
The --smart option converts straight quotes to curly quotes, --- and -- to Em-dashes, and ... to ellipses. <!-- HTML comments work --> Right Left Center Default ------- ------ ---------- ------- 12 12 12 12 123 123 123 123 1 1 1 1 Table: Demonstration of simple table syntax. Multi-line tables are also supported: ------------------------------------------------------------- Centered Default Right Left Header Aligned Aligned Aligned ----------- ------- --------------- ------------------------- First row 12.0 Example of a row that spans multiple lines. Second row 5.0 Here's another one. Note the blank line between rows. ------------------------------------------------------------- Table: Here's the caption. It, too, may span multiple lines. Document header: % title % author(s) (separated by semicolons) % date
--- renders as an em-dash -- renders as an en-dash ... renders as an ellipsis {::comment} A comment ignored by kramdown {:/comment} | Table header 1 | Table header 2 | Table header 3 | Table header 4 | |:---------------|:--------------:|---------------:|----------------| | left aligned | center aligned | right aligned | default align |
© Paul Gorman