The Capiche Markdown guide.

@capiche

Markdown is the most popular way to format plain text.

Add common characters like asterisks and dashes to text, much like how you might format a quick store list in your notes app or add emphasis to a word in a text message, to structure and style your writing with Markdown. It’s more universal than rich text formatting (which depends on the program you’re using), easier to read than HTML.

Here’s how.

Mostly, write as normal. Most text doesn’t need formatting; type your words and sentences as you would anywhere. Press Return twice after paragraphs to make sure there’s a blank line between them, otherwise there’s nothing else to think about.

When you need to format text, the core things to remember are to add hash signs before text for headers, single underscores around text for italics, double underscores for bold, and brackets+parenthesis for links. Here are the core markdown formatting options to remember:

• Italics: Add a single underscore or asterisk before and after the text, like _this_ or *this*.
• Bold: Add two underscores or asterisks before and after the text, like __this__ or **this**.
• Bold and Italics: Add three underscores or asterisks such as ***this***.
• Code: Add a backtick before and after the text like `this`. Or, to add full lines of code, indent the text with a tab or four spaces.
• Link: Add a square bracket before and after the linked text, then add the link wrapped in parenthesis like [this](https://capiche.com/).
• Image: On a new line, add an exclamation mark followed by square brackets with the alt text inside, followed by the link to the image wrapped in parenthesis like ![this](https://d.pr/tkjuTG+)
• Quote: Add the quoted text on its own line, then put a greater than symbol before the text like > this.
• Header: On a new line, add a single hash or pound sign before the header text for an H1 header like # This; use 2 hash signs for H2, 3 for H3, and so on.
• Line break: On a new line, add three asterisks like this ***.
• Unordered lists: Put each list item on its own line and add a dash and space before each item like - this.
• Ordered lists: Put each list item on its own line and add the correct order number and a space before each item like 1. this.

That’s the basics. For more advanced Markdown formatting, check John Gruber’s original Markdown documentation for more examples. And for fun, here's the story behind markdown, and how it was inspired by early email formatting.