Markdown syntax can enable you to be more expressive with your text posts on this website, with the ability to write **bold** text, add hyperlinks or embed images onto your profile page, Direct Messages, forum posts and elsewhere - any place on nonshy that says "Markdown formatting supported."

This is a simple reference sheet for Markdown syntax. Markdown was pioneered by John Gruber and the de facto place to find in-depth documentation is at https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax where it was originally described.

Markdown is now a widely supported format across a variety of apps and websites, and there are a few different "flavors" of Markdown with slightly varied behaviors. This website uses GitHub Flavored Markdown, an extension of Markdown that supports fenced code blocks, tables, and other useful features - many of which you can learn about on this page.

• Block Elements
  • Paragraphs and Line Breaks
  • Headers
  • Blockquotes
  • Lists
  • Code Blocks
  • Horizontal Rules
• Span Elements
  • Links
  • Emphasis
  • Code
  • Images
• Miscellaneous
  • Automatic Links
  • Backslash Escapes
  • Literal HTML Tags

Block Elements

Paragraphs and Line Breaks

A paragraph is defined as a group of lines of text separated from other groups by at least one blank line. A hard return inside a paragraph doesn't get rendered in the output.

Headers

There are two methods to declare a header in Markdown: "underline" it by writing === or --- on the line directly below the heading (for <h1> and <h2>, respectively), or by prefixing the heading with # symbols. Usually the latter option is the easiest, and you can get more levels of headers this way.

Blockquotes

Prefix a line of text with > to "quote" it -- like in "e-mail syntax."

You may have multiple layers of quotes by using multiple > symbols.

Lists

Code Blocks

The typical Markdown way to write a code block is to indent each line of a paragraph with at least 4 spaces or 1 tab character.

GitHub-style "fenced code blocks" are also supported. Copy the following example into the above Markdown editor to see how it looks!

```
This is a GitHub-style "fenced code block", denoted by having three
backticks/grave symbols above and below the code.
```

Horizontal Rules

Span Elements

Links

The basic syntax for a hyperlink looks like [Text](https://example.com). You can also write your links "footnote style", where the link text goes like [Text][1] and then you provide the URL at the bottom of your post. See the examples below:

Emphasis

Code

Images

Miscellaneous

Automatic Links

Some naked links are automatically clickable, but to be sure you can wrap them in <angle brackets>:

Backslash Escapes

Use backslash characters to escape any other special characters in the Markdown syntax. For example, \* to insert a literal asterisk so that it doesn't get mistaken for e.g. emphasized text, a list item, etc.

Markdown provides backslash escapes for the following characters:

\   backslash
`   backtick
*   asterisk
_   underscore
{}  curly braces
[]  square brackets
()  parenthesis
#   hash mark
+   plus sign
-   minus sign (hyphen)
.   dot
!   exclamation mark

Literal HTML Tags

All Markdown syntax has a corresponding primitive HTML tag, and you may prefer to just write the HTML directly. This is supported too!

Note: non-trivial tags will be automatically blocked and hidden from the Markdown output. You can't use CSS classes or styles, <script> tags, or other dangerous HTML.