Formatting Text Spans

Surround text with a single asterisk or underscore for emphasis (italics)

Surround text with double asterisks or underscores to make it bold

Boldness and emphasis can be nested for bold-italic text

Surround text with one of more backticks to make it code

Surround text with one of more tildes to strike it through

Surround text with a single dollar sign to make it a LaTeX equation

Formatting Text Blocks

Start a line with greater than then space to make it a quote

Surround a block of text with lines starting with three backticks to make it a code block

x = (1 + sqrt(5)) / 2

Optionally specify the language of the code after the backticks to highlight syntax

x = (1 + sqrt(5)) / 2

Lists

Start lines with hyphens, plus or asterisks then a space to make an unordered list

(Be consistent about which punctuation is used)

Start lines with a number followed by a period then a space to make an ordered list.

(Numbering is automatic and follows from the first element.)

Inside a list, include square brackets filled with a space or character (conventionally 'x') to create a checklist

Use space indentation to nest lists

Headings

Start a line with one to six hashes then a space to make it a heading

For level one headings, you can also follow the line with a line of equals signs

For level two headings, you can also follow the line with a line of hyphens

Links, Images and Footnotes

Use square brackets containing link text followed by parentheses containing a URL to include a hyperlink

Use square brackets containing link text followed by a reference number, then (usually at the bottom of the doc) square brackets containing the reference number followed by a colon then a space then a URL to include reference-style hyperlinks.

Use an exclamation mark followed by square brackets containing alt text followed by parentheses containing a URL or path to a file to include an image

Use square brackets containing a caret then a number (both within the content and at the foot of the page) to create a footnote.

Tables

Use pipes to delimit columns in a table. Use hyphens to separate the header from the content. Use a colon to the left or right of those hyphens to indicate column alignment.

| Sepal Length| Sepal Width| Petal Length| Petal Width|      Species |

|-----------------:|----------------:|-----------------:|---------------:|:---------------|

|                 5.1|                3.3|                  1.7|              0.5|        setosa |

|                4.8|                3.0|                  1.4|              0.1|        setosa |

|                 6.1|                2.8|                 4.7|               1.2|   versicolor |

|                 6.1|                3.0|                 4.6|               1.4|  versicolor |

Breaks

Have a line with only three or more hyphens, asterisks, or underscores (plus optional spaces) to include a horizontal rule.

By default, text on consecutive lines flows as a single line.

Two spaces at the end of a line result in a line break.

Blank lines create a new paragraph.