+
Markdown syntax
+
Full markdown syntax taken from John Gruber’s Daring Fireball.
+Did you know that 9 out of 10 bloggers prefer to write in markdown?
+
+
Markdown: Syntax
+
+
Note: This document is itself written using Markdown; you
+can see the source for it by adding ‘.text’ to the URL.
+
+
Overview
+
+
Philosophy
+
+
Markdown is intended to be as easy-to-read and easy-to-write as is feasible.
+
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. While
+Markdown’s syntax has been influenced by several existing text-to-HTML
+filters – including Setext, atx, Textile, reStructuredText,
+Grutatext, and EtText – the single biggest source of
+inspiration for Markdown’s syntax is the format of plain text email.
+
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.
+
Inline HTML
+
+
Markdown’s syntax is intended for one purpose: to be used as a
+format for writing for the web.
+
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.
+
For example, to add an HTML table to a Markdown article:
+
This is a regular paragraph.
+
+<table>
+ <tr>
+ <td>Foo</td>
+ </tr>
+</table>
+
+This is another regular paragraph.
+
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.
+
Automatic Escaping for Special Characters
+
+
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
+&.
+
Ampersands in particular are bedeviling for web writers. If you want to
+write about ‘AT&T’, you need to write ‘AT&T‘. You even need to
+escape ampersands within URLs. Thus, if you want to link to:
+
http://images.google.com/images?num=30&q=larry+bird
+
you need to encode the URL as:
+
http://images.google.com/images?num=30&q=larry+bird
+
in your anchor tag href attribute. Needless to say, this is easy to
+forget, and is probably the single most common source of HTML validation
+errors in otherwise well-marked-up web sites.
+
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:
+
©
+
and Markdown will leave it alone. But if you write:
+
AT&T
+
Markdown will translate it to:
+
AT&T
+
Similarly, because Markdown supports inline HTML, if you use
+angle brackets as delimiters for HTML tags, Markdown will treat them as
+such. But if you write:
+
4 < 5
+
Markdown will translate it to:
+
4 < 5
+
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.)
+
+
Block Elements
+
+
+
Paragraphs and Line Breaks
+
+
A paragraph is simply one or more consecutive lines of text, separated
+by one or more blank lines. (A blank line is any line that looks like a
+blank line – a line containing nothing but spaces or tabs is considered
+blank.) Normal paragraphs should not be indented with spaces or tabs.
+
The implication of the “one or more consecutive lines of text” rule is
+that Markdown supports “hard-wrapped” text paragraphs. This differs
+significantly from most other text-to-HTML formatters (including Movable
+Type’s “Convert Line Breaks” option) which translate every line break
+character in a paragraph into a <br /> tag.
+
When you do want to insert a <br /> break tag using Markdown, you
+end a line with two or more spaces, then type return.
+
Yes, this takes a tad more effort to create a <br />, but a simplistic
+“every line break is a <br />“ rule wouldn’t work for Markdown.
+Markdown’s email-style blockquoting and multi-paragraph list items
+work best – and look better – when you format them with hard breaks.
+
+
+
Markdown supports two styles of headers, Setext and atx.
+
Setext-style headers are “underlined” using equal signs (for first-level
+headers) and dashes (for second-level headers). For example:
+
This is an H1
+=============
+
+This is an H2
+-------------
+
Any number of underlining =‘s or -‘s will work.
+
Atx-style headers use 1-6 hash characters at the start of the line,
+corresponding to header levels 1-6. For example:
+
# This is an H1
+
+## This is an H2
+
+###### This is an H6
+
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.) :
+
# This is an H1 #
+
+## This is an H2 ##
+
+### This is an H3 ######
+
Blockquotes
+
+
Markdown uses email-style > characters for blockquoting. If you’re
+familiar with quoting passages of text in an email message, then you
+know how to create a blockquote in Markdown. 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.
+
Markdown allows you to be lazy and only put the > before the first
+line of a hard-wrapped paragraph:
+
> 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 the first list item.
+- This is the second list item.
+
+Here’s some example code:
+return shell_exec("echo $input | $markdown_script");
+
+
Any decent text editor should make email-style quoting easy. For
+example, with BBEdit, you can make a selection and choose Increase
+Quote Level from the Text menu.
+
Lists
+
+
Markdown supports ordered (numbered) and unordered (bulleted) lists.
+
Unordered lists use asterisks, pluses, and hyphens – interchangably
+– as list markers:
+
* Red
+* Green
+* Blue
+
is equivalent to:
+
+ Red
++ Green
++ Blue
+
and:
+
- Red
+- Green
+- Blue
+
Ordered lists use numbers followed by periods:
+
1. Bird
+2. McHale
+3. Parish
+
It’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. Parish
+
or even:
+
3. Bird
+1. McHale
+8. Parish
+
you’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 consectetuer libero luctus adipiscing.
+
If list items are separated by blank lines, Markdown will wrap the
+items in <p> tags in the HTML output. For example, this input:
+
* Bird
+* Magic
+
will turn into:
+
<ul>
+<li>Bird</li>
+<li>Magic</li>
+</ul>
+
But this:
+
* Bird
+
+* Magic
+
will 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:
+
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.
+
It looks nice if you indent every line of the subsequent
+paragraphs, but here again, Markdown will allow you to be lazy:
+
* This is a list item with two paragraphs.
+
+ This is the second paragraph in the list item. You're
+only required to indent the first line. Lorem ipsum dolor
+sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit.
+
+* Another item in the same list.
+
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 item.
+
To put a code block within a list item, the code block needs
+to be indented twice – 8 spaces or two tabs:
+
* A list item with a code block:
+
+ <code goes here>
+
It’s worth noting that it’s possible to trigger an ordered list by
+accident, by writing something like this:
+
1986. What a great season.
+
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
+
+
Pre-formatted code blocks are used for writing about programming or
+markup source code. Rather than forming normal paragraphs, 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:
+
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 tell
+
will 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).
+
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 – just paste
+it and indent it, and Markdown will handle the hassle of encoding the
+ampersands and angle brackets. For example, this:
+
<div class="footer">
+ © 2004 Foo Corporation
+ </div>
+
will turn into:
+
<pre><code><div class="footer">
+ &copy; 2004 Foo Corporation
+</div>
+</code></pre>
+
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.
+
Horizontal Rules
+
+
You can produce a horizontal rule tag (<hr />) by placing three or
+more hyphens, asterisks, or underscores on a line by themselves. If you
+wish, you may use spaces between the hyphens or asterisks. Each of the
+following lines will produce a horizontal rule:
+
* * *
+
+***
+
+*****
+
+- - -
+
+---------------------------------------
+
+
Span Elements
+
+
Links
+
+
Markdown supports two style of links: inline and reference.
+
In both styles, the link text is delimited by [square brackets].
+
To create an inline link, use a set of regular parentheses immediately
+after the link text’s closing square bracket. Inside the parentheses,
+put the URL where you want the link to point, along with an optional
+title for the link, surrounded in quotes. For example:
+
This is [an example](http://example.com/ "Title") inline link.
+
+[This link](http://example.net/) has no title attribute.
+
Will produce:
+
<p>This is <a href="http://example.com/" title="Title">
+an example</a> inline link.</p>
+
+<p><a href="http://example.net/">This link</a> has no
+title attribute.</p>
+
If you’re referring to a local resource on the same server, you can
+use relative paths:
+
See my [About](/about/) page for details.
+
Reference-style links use a second set of square brackets, inside
+which you place a label of your choosing to identify the link:
+
This is [an example][id] reference-style link.
+
You can optionally use a space to separate the sets of brackets:
+
This is [an example] [id] reference-style link.
+
Then, anywhere in the document, you define your link label like this,
+on a line by itself:
+
[id]: http://example.com/ "Optional Title Here"
+
That is:
+
+- Square brackets containing the link identifier (optionally
+indented from the left margin using up to three spaces);
+- followed by a colon;
+- followed by one or more spaces (or tabs);
+- followed by the URL for the link;
+- optionally followed by a title attribute for the link, enclosed
+in double or single quotes, or enclosed in parentheses.
+
+
The following three link definitions are equivalent:
+
foo: http://example.com/ ‘Optional Title Here’
+
Note: There is a known bug in Markdown.pl 1.0.1 which prevents
+single quotes from being used to delimit link titles.
+
The link URL may, optionally, be surrounded by angle brackets:
+
[id]: <http://example.com/> "Optional Title Here"
+
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:
+
[id]: http://example.com/longish/path/to/resource/here
+ "Optional Title Here"
+
Link definitions are only used for creating links during Markdown
+processing, and are stripped from your document in the HTML output.
+
Link definition names may consist of letters, numbers, spaces, and
+punctuation – but they are not case sensitive. E.g. these two links:
+
[link text][a]
+ [link text][A]
+
are equivalent.
+
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
+
And then define the link:
+
Because link names may contain spaces, this shortcut even works for
+multiple words in the link text:
+
Visit Daring Fireball for more information.
+
And then define the link:
+
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.
+
Here’s an example of reference links in action:
+
I get 10 times more traffic from [Google] [1] than from
+[Yahoo] [2] or [MSN] [3].
+
+ [1]: http://google.com/ "Google"
+ [2]: http://search.yahoo.com/ "Yahoo Search"
+ [3]: http://search.msn.com/ "MSN Search"
+
Using the implicit link name shortcut, you could instead write:
+
I get 10 times more traffic from [Google][] than from
+[Yahoo][] or [MSN][].
+
+ [google]: http://google.com/ "Google"
+ [yahoo]: http://search.yahoo.com/ "Yahoo Search"
+ [msn]: http://search.msn.com/ "MSN Search"
+
Both of the above examples will produce the following HTML output:
+
<p>I get 10 times more traffic from <a href="http://google.com/"
+title="Google">Google</a> than from
+<a href="http://search.yahoo.com/" title="Yahoo Search">Yahoo</a>
+or <a href="http://search.msn.com/" title="MSN Search">MSN</a>.</p>
+
For comparison, here is the same paragraph written using
+Markdown’s inline link style:
+
I get 10 times more traffic from [Google](http://google.com/ "Google")
+than from [Yahoo](http://search.yahoo.com/ "Yahoo Search") or
+[MSN](http://search.msn.com/ "MSN Search").
+
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. Compare the above examples: using
+reference-style links, the paragraph itself is only 81 characters
+long; with inline-style links, it’s 176 characters; and as raw HTML,
+it’s 234 characters. In the raw HTML, there’s more markup than there
+is text.
+
With Markdown’s reference-style links, a source document much more
+closely resembles the final output, as rendered in a browser. By
+allowing you to move the markup-related metadata out of the paragraph,
+you can add links without interrupting the narrative flow of your prose.
+
Emphasis
+
+
Markdown treats asterisks (*) and underscores (_) as indicators of
+emphasis. Text wrapped with one * or _ will be wrapped with an
+HTML <em> tag; double *‘s or _‘s will be wrapped with an HTML
+<strong> tag. E.g., this input:
+
*single asterisks*
+
+_single underscores_
+
+**double asterisks**
+
+__double underscores__
+
will produce:
+
<em>single asterisks</em>
+
+<em>single underscores</em>
+
+<strong>double asterisks</strong>
+
+<strong>double underscores</strong>
+
You can use whichever style you prefer; the lone restriction is that
+the same character must be used to open and close an emphasis span.
+
Emphasis can be used in the middle of a word:
+
un*frigging*believable
+
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\*
+
Code
+
+
To indicate a span of code, wrap it with backtick quotes (` ).
+Unlike a pre-formatted code block, a code span indicates code within a
+normal paragraph. For example:
+
Use the `printf()` function.
+
will produce:
+
<p>Use the <code>printf()</code> function.</p>
+
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.``
+
which will produce this:
+
<p><code>There is a literal backtick (`) here.</code></p>
+
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:
+
A single backtick in a code span: `
+
A backtick-delimited string in a code span: `foo`
+
will produce:
+
A single backtick in a code span: `
+
+
A backtick-delimited string in a code span: foo
+
+
With a code span, ampersands and angle brackets are encoded as HTML
+entities automatically, which makes it easy to include example HTML
+tags. Markdown will turn this:
+
Please don't use any `<blink>` tags.
+
into:
+
<p>Please don't use any <code><blink></code> tags.</p>
+
You can write this:
+
`—` is the decimal-encoded equivalent of `—`.
+
to produce:
+
<p><code>&#8212;</code> is the decimal-encoded
+equivalent of <code>&mdash;</code>.</p>
+
Images
+
+
Admittedly, it’s fairly difficult to devise a “natural” syntax for
+placing images into a plain text document format.
+
Markdown uses an image syntax that is intended to resemble the syntax
+for links, allowing for two styles: inline and reference.
+
Inline image syntax looks like this:
+
+
+
+
That is:
+
+- An exclamation mark:
!;
+- followed by a set of square brackets, containing the
alt
+attribute text for the image;
+- followed by a set of parentheses, containing the URL or path to
+the image, and an optional
title attribute enclosed in double
+or single quotes.
+
+
Reference-style image syntax looks like this:
+
![Alt text][id]
+
Where “id” is the name of a defined image reference. Image references
+are defined using syntax identical to link references:
+
[id]: url/to/image "Optional title attribute"
+
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.
+
+
Miscellaneous
+
+
Automatic Links
+
+
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/>
+
Markdown will turn this into:
+
<a href="http://example.com/">http://example.com/</a>
+
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>
+
which will render in a browser as a clickable link to “address@example.com”.
+
(This sort of entity-encoding trick will indeed fool many, if not
+most, address-harvesting bots, but it definitely won’t fool all of
+them. It’s better than nothing, but an address published in this way
+will probably eventually start receiving spam.)
+
Backslash Escapes
+
+
Markdown allows you to use backslash escapes to generate literal
+characters which would otherwise have special meaning in Markdown’s
+formatting syntax. For example, if you wanted to surround a word
+with literal asterisks (instead of an HTML <em> tag), you can use
+backslashes before the asterisks, like this:
+
\*literal asterisks\*
+
Markdown provides backslash escapes for the following characters:
+
\ backslash
+` backtick
+* asterisk
+_ underscore
+{} curly braces
+[] square brackets
+() parentheses
+# hash mark
+
+
+- minus sign (hyphen)
+. dot
+! exclamation mark
+
+
+
BlurAdmin
+
+
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ 
- 
