Markdown Code blocks with backticks or tabsĪdd `single backticks` around text to format it as code (to, for example, include sample HTML code in your copy instead of rendering the HTML code). If you still decide you need to underline, use HTML. You shouldn't underline text on the web unless it's a link, as most readers will think your underlined text is a broken link. Markdown Strikethrough with tildesĪdd ~~two tildes~~ around text to Strikethrough. Markdown Bold and Italics with three asterisks or underscoresĪdd either ***three asterisks*** or _three underscores_ before and after your text to make it both bold and italicized (any combination of the two symbols will likely work, and you can mix it up-for example, add single asterisks around one word inside a bolded phrase to make it italicized and bold). Markdown Bold with double asterisks or underscoresĪdd either **two asterisks** or _two underscores_ before and after your text to make it bold. Here are the characters to remember (then check John Gruber's original Markdown documentation for more details and a bit of the thinking behind each choice): Markdown Italics with single asterisks or underscoresĪdd either *one asterisk* or _one underscore_ before and after your text to italicize it. When you need formatting, then, you'll either put characters at the beginning of the line to change that whole line (for headings, quotes, and list items) or put characters before and after letters and words to format them specifically (for bold, italics, links, and more). The only thing to note is you need to press enter twice after every paragraph, for a full blank line between every paragraph. If you're writing plain text-normal sentences and paragraphs without anything extra-just write as normal. Everything you need to know about Markdown in 5 minutes or less. Gruber's inspiration was that email-style plain text formatting was pretty great, and if you could automatically convert that to HTML for web publishing and rich text for everything else, you might finally get the best of both worlds.Īnd that's why we have Markdown. If only you could combine the consistency of HTML and the simplicity of rich text. That is until you write something in Word and paste it into WordPress-and it might be fine, or it might be irretrievably broken. Great, even, in writing-focused tools like Medium. Only, now you had to wrap around every bit of text you wanted in bold, and woe betides if you forgot to close out the formatting.ĬMS tools like WordPress tried to bridge the gap, with simple rich text editors that'd translate your text into HTML-and today, they're generally fine. Then you'd write HTML with headings and bold text and any formatting you want-and paired with the CSS, it would look consistently great. You would define your style, your colors, fonts, and more, in CSS. HTML-especially when paired with CSS-promised consistency at the expense of simplicity. Anyone could make a document look appealing or appalling. Rich text promised beauty, text formatted to your heart's content. Slowly a syntax of symbols formed around early digital writing, especially in email, and we learned to read the symbols as formatting. Bullet lists could be added with dashes, ordered lists with numbers, periods, and lines. Quotes could be offset with a greater-than symbol. You couldn't make your headlines bold, but you could type a line of dashes or equal symbols underneath to highlight them. Much like typewriters, you were limited only by your creativity on early computers. You couldn't bold or strikethrough text, or even change fonts and colors on the earliest software. It all started in 2004 when John Gruber introduced Markdown as "Email-style writing for the web."Ĭomputing started with plain text, typewriter-style, with letters and symbols and little else.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |