Markdown Cheat Sheet

Markdown is a wonderfully simple approach to creating web pages, written by John Gruber of Daring Fireball. You get on with the business of writing (without any fancy code) and Markdown takes care of producing clean, web standards compliant HTML.

The Daring Fireball site provides full documentation for Markdown, but the following examples should get you started.

Section Headings

You can define headings of different levels when creating a web page. The most important heading (which typically only occurs once on each page -- at the top) is heading 1. A level 1 heading can be created with Markdown by typing a single '#' character at the start of a line. The heading at the top of this page was defined like this:

# Markdown Cheat Sheet

To create a secondary heading (such as the one for this section) you just use two '#' characters, like so:

## Section Headings

You can use up to six '#' characters to create a level 6 heading, but you will probably find that you don't need to nest your headings quite so deeply!

Paragraphs

Paragraphs are very easy; separate them with a blank line. You can write your paragraph on one long line, or you can wrap the lines yourself if you prefer.

This section was marked up like so:

Paragraphs are very easy; separate them with a blank line. You can write your paragraph on one long line,
or you can
wrap the lines yourself
if you prefer.

This section was marked up like so:

Bold and Italics

It's very easy to add emphasis with bold and italics:

It's **very** easy to do **bold** and *italics*:

You can also use underscores if you prefer:

It's __very__ easy to do __bold__ and _italics_:

Links

Create simple links by wrapping square brackets around the link text and round brackets around the URL:

[Nesta CMS](https://nestacms.com)

If you want to give your readers an extra about the link that they're about to follow you can set a link title:

[Nesta CMS](https://nestacms.com "Nesta is a nice CMS")

Titles usually appear as a tooltip when you hover over the link, and help search engines work out what a page is about.

Bulleted Lists

Start each line with hyphen or an asterisk, followed by a space. List items can be nested. This text:

* Bullet 1
* Bullet 2
  * Bullet 2a
  * Bullet 2b
* Bullet 3

...produces this list:

  • Bullet 1
  • Bullet 2
    • Bullet 2a
    • Bullet 2b
  • Bullet 3

Numbered Lists

Start each line with number and a period, then a space. This text…

1. Baked potato
2. Baked beans
3. Pepper

...produces this list:

  1. Baked potato
  2. Baked beans
  3. Pepper

Quotes

If you need to cite a paragraph of somebody else's work you really ought to attribute it to them properly by using HTML's <blockquote/> tag. You can produce it with Markdown by adding a single '>' character at the beginning of the line.

This text:

> One thing was certain, that the white kitten had had nothing
> to do with it -- it was the black kitten's fault entirely. For
> the white kitten had been having its face washed by the old cat,
> for the last quarter of an hour (and bearing it pretty well,
> considering) so you see that it couldn't have had any hand in
> the mischief. <cite>Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking
> Glass</cite>

...produces:

One thing was certain, that the white kitten had had nothing to do with it -- it was the black kitten's fault entirely. For the white kitten had been having its face washed by the old cat, for the last quarter of an hour (and bearing it pretty well, considering) so you see that it couldn't have had any hand in the mischief. -- Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass