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.

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.

Headers

Headers are denoted in two different ways:

Adding any number of equals signs (H1) or hyphens (H2) to a new line after your intended header.

This is an H1
=============
 
This is an H2
-------------

You may also use Atx headers through the use of hashes (#) any number from 1-6. These are added at the start of the line

# This is an H1
 
## This is an H2
 
###### This is an H6

note that you may optionally "close" these atx headers for cosmetic purposes

# This is an H1 #
 
## This is an H2 ##
 
###### This is an H6 ######

Text Formatting

Markdown Markup Standard

Markdown treats asterisks (*) and underscores (_) as indicators of emphasis. Text wrapped with one asterisks or underscores will be wrapped with an HTML <em> tag; double asterisks or underscores will be wrapped with an HTML <strong> tag. E.g., this input:

*single asterisks*
 
_single underscores_
 
**double asterisks**
 
__double underscores__

will produce:

single asterisks

single underscores

double asterisks

double underscores

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\*

Custom Buttons² Wiki Specific

The following have been added for text formatting since we believe they are needed.

! !double exclamations! !  
~ ~double tildes~ ~  

* without the spaces

which produce:

double exclamations

double tildes

Blockquoting

Markdown uses email-style > characters for blockquoting. Simply place a > at the beginning of a line to indicate a quote.

> 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.

You may also opt to only use the > at the beginning of hard-wrapped paragraphs:

> 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.

You may also have nested quotes:

> 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 a header.
> 
> 1.   This is the first list item.
> 2.   This is the second list item.
> 
> Here's some example code:
> 
>     return shell_exec("echo $input | $markdown_script");

Lists

Unordered

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

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. 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 would get the same list every time. The point is to be able to use ordinal numbers for readability in the source even though they aren't typically used in source code.

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 blockquotes within a list item, the blockquote needs to be indented twice — 8 spaces or two tabs:

*   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.

Definition Lists

Definition lists are made of terms and definitions of these terms, much like in a dictionary.

A simple definition list in Markdown is made of a single-line term followed by a colon and the definition for that term.

Apple
:   Pomaceous fruit of plants of the genus Malus in 
    the family Rosaceae.
 
Orange
:   The fruit of an evergreen tree of the genus Citrus.

Terms must be separated from the previous definition by a blank line. Definitions can span on multiple lines, in which case they should be indented. But you don’t really have to: if you want to be lazy, you could forget to indent a definition that span on multiple lines and it will still work:

Apple
:   Pomaceous fruit of plants of the genus Malus in 
 
the family Rosaceae.
 
 
Orange
:   The fruit of an evergreen tree of the genus Citrus.

Each of the preceding definition lists will give the same HTML result:

<dl>
<dt>Apple</dt>
<dd>Pomaceous fruit of plants of the genus Malus in 
the family Rosaceae.</dd>
 
<dt>Orange</dt>
<dd>The fruit of an evergreen tree of the genus Citrus.</dd>
</dl>

Colons as definition markers typically start at the left margin, but may be indented by up to three spaces. Definition markers must be followed by one or more spaces or a tab.

Definition lists can have more than one definition associated with one term:

Apple
:   Pomaceous fruit of plants of the genus Malus in 
    the family Rosaceae.
:   An american computer company.
 
Orange
:   The fruit of an evergreen tree of the genus Citrus.

You can also associate more than one term to a definition:

Term 1
Term 2
:   Definition a
 
Term 3
:   Definition b

If a definition is preceded by a blank line, Markdown will wrap the definition in <p> tags in the HTML output. For example, this:

Apple
 
:   Pomaceous fruit of plants of the genus Malus in 
    the family Rosaceae.
 
Orange
 
:    The fruit of an evergreen tree of the genus Citrus.

will turn into this:

<dl>
<dt>Apple</dt>
<dd>
<p>Pomaceous fruit of plants of the genus Malus in 
the family Rosaceae.</p>
</dd>
 
<dt>Orange</dt>
<dd>
<p>The fruit of an evergreen tree of the genus Citrus.</p>
</dd>
</dl>

And just like regular list items, definitions can contain multiple paragraphs, and include other block-level elements such as blockquotes, code blocks, lists, and even other definition lists.

Term 1
 
:   This is a definition 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.
 
:   Second definition for term 1, also wrapped in a paragraph
    because of the blank line preceding it.
 
Term 2
 
:   This definition has a code block, a blockquote and a list.
 
        code block.
 
    > block quote
    > on two lines.
 
    1.  first list item
    2.  second list item

Footnotes

Footnotes work mostly like reference-style links. A footnote is made of two things: a marker in the text that will become a superscript number; a footnote definition that will be placed in a list of footnotes at the end of the document. A footnote looks like this:

That's some text with a footnote.[^1]
 
[^1]: And that's the footnote.

Footnote definitions can be found anywhere in the document, but footnotes will always be listed in the order they are linked to in the text. Note that you cannot make two links to the same footnotes: if you try, the second footnote reference will be left as plain text.

Each footnote must have a distinct name. That name will be used to link footnote references to footnote definitions, but has no effect on the numbering of the footnotes. Names can contain any character valid within an id attribute in HTML.

Footnotes can contain block-level elements, which means that you can put multiple paragraphs, lists, blockquotes and so on in a footnote. It works the same as for list items: just indent the following paragraphs by four spaces in the footnote definition:

That's some text with a footnote.[^1]
 
[^1]: And that's the footnote.
 
    That's the second paragraph.

If you want things to align better, you can leave the first line of the footnote empty and put your first paragraph just below:

[^1]:
    And that's the footnote.
 
    That's the second paragraph.

Abbreviations

Markdown adds supports for abbreviations (HTML tag <abbr>). How it works is pretty simple: create an abbreviation definition like this:

*[HTML]: Hyper Text Markup Language
*[W3C]:  World Wide Web Consortium

then, elsewhere in the document, write text such as:

The HTML specification
is maintained by the W3C.

and any instance of those words in the text will become:

The <abbr title="Hyper Text Markup Language">HTML</abbr> specification
is maintained by the <abbr title="World Wide Web Consortium">W3C</abbr>.

Abbreviation are case-sensitive, and will span on multiple words when defined as such. An abbreviation may also have an empty definition, in which case <abbr> tags will be added in the text but the title attribute will be omitted.

Operation Tigra Genesis is going well.
 
*[Tigra Genesis]:

Abbreviation definition can be anywhere in the document. They are stripped from the final document.

Tables

First line contains column headers; second line contains a mandatory separator line between the headers and the content; each following line is a row in the table. Columns are always separated by the pipe (|) character. Once converted to HTML, the result is like this:

First Header  | Second Header
------------- | -------------
Content Cell  | Content Cell
Content Cell  | Content Cell

If you wish, you can add a leading and tailing pipe to each line of the table. Use the form that you like. As an illustration, this will give the same result as above:

| First Header  | Second Header |
| ------------- | ------------- |
| Content Cell  | Content Cell  |
| Content Cell  | Content Cell  |

Note: A table need at least one pipe on each line for Markdown to parse it correctly. This means that the only way to create a one-column table is to add a leading or a tailing pipe, or both of them, to each line.

You can specify alignment for each column by adding colons to separator lines. A colon at the left of the separator line will make the column left-aligned; a colon on the right of the line will make the column right-aligned; colons at both side means the column is center-aligned.

| Item      | Value |
| --------- | -----:|
| Computer  | $1600 |
| Phone     |   $12 |
| Pipe      |    $1 |

Code

Codeblocks

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.

Note that one level of indentation — 4 spaces or 1 tab — is removed from each line.

A code block continues until it reaches a line that is not indented (or the end of the article).

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.

Alternatively, you may use fenced codeblocks. Fenced code blocks are like Markdown’s regular code blocks, except that they’re not indented and instead rely on a start and end fence lines to delimit the code block. The code block start with a line containing three or more tilde ~ characters, and ends with the first line with the same number of tilde ~. For instance:

<div class="geshifilter"><pre class="javascript geshifilter-javascript" style="font-family:monospace;"> a one<span class="sy0">-</span>line code block