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Basics of Formatting
Markdown is a lightweight markup language with plain-text formatting syntax. Its design allows it to be converted to many output formats, but the main one is HTML. Markdown is often used to format readme files, for writing messages in online discussion forums, and to create rich text using a plain text editor.
Key Syntax Elements
- Emphasis: Markdown uses asterisks or underscores for emphasizing text. Single asterisks or underscores are used for italics, and double for bold.
- Headers: Markdown uses hash signs for headers. A single hash sign before a line of text makes it a first-level heading. Adding more hash signs, up to six, creates sub-level headings.
- Lists: To create an unordered list, you can use asterisks, pluses, or hyphens as list markers. For an ordered list, simply use numbers followed by periods.
- Links and Images: Markdown uses brackets to enclose the text that should be linked and parentheses to contain the URL to which the text should point. Images are similar to links but they have an exclamation mark in front of the brackets.
- Blockquotes: For blockquotes, Markdown uses the greater than sign as a marker.
Remember, the goal of Markdown is to be as readable as possible. Its syntax is intended not to look like tags or formatting instructions, which makes it easy to read and write.