1MARKDOWN(7) BSD Miscellaneous Information Manual MARKDOWN(7)
2
4 Markdown — The Markdown text formatting syntax
5
7 Philosophy
8 Markdown is intended to be as easy-to-read and easy-to-write as is feasi‐
9 ble.
10
11 Readability, however, is emphasized above all else. A Markdown-formatted
12 document should be publishable as-is, as plain text, without looking like
13 it's been marked up with tags or formatting instructions. While Mark‐
14 down's syntax has been influenced by several existing text-to-HTML fil‐
15 ters -- including Setext, atx, Textile, reStructuredText, Grutatext, and
16 EtText -- the single biggest source of inspiration for Markdown's syntax
17 is the format of plain text email.
18
19 To this end, Markdown's syntax is comprised entirely of punctuation char‐
20 acters, which punctuation characters have been carefully chosen so as to
21 look like what they mean. E.g., asterisks around a word actually look
22 like *emphasis*. Markdown lists look like, well, lists. Even blockquotes
23 look like quoted passages of text, assuming you've ever used email.
24
25 Inline HTML
26 Markdown's syntax is intended for one purpose: to be used as a format for
27 writing for the web.
28
29 Markdown is not a replacement for HTML, or even close to it. Its syntax
30 is very small, corresponding only to a very small subset of HTML tags.
31 The idea is not to create a syntax that makes it easier to insert HTML
32 tags. In my opinion, HTML tags are already easy to insert. The idea for
33 Markdown is to make it easy to read, write, and edit prose. HTML is a
34 publishing format; Markdown is a writing format. Thus, Markdown's format‐
35 ting syntax only addresses issues that can be conveyed in plain text.
36
37 For any markup that is not covered by Markdown's syntax, you simply use
38 HTML itself. There's no need to preface it or delimit it to indicate that
39 you're switching from Markdown to HTML; you just use the tags.
40
41 The only restrictions are that block-level HTML elements -- e.g. <div>,
42 <table>, <pre>, <p>, etc. -- must be separated from surrounding content
43 by blank lines, and the start and end tags of the block should not be
44 indented with tabs or spaces. Markdown is smart enough not to add extra
45 (unwanted) <p> tags around HTML block-level tags.
46
47 For example, to add an HTML table to a Markdown article:
48
49 This is a regular paragraph.
50
51 <table>
52 <tr>
53 <td>Foo</td>
54 </tr>
55 </table>
56
57 This is another regular paragraph.
58
59 Note that Markdown formatting syntax is not processed within block-level
60 HTML tags. E.g., you can't use Markdown-style *emphasis* inside an HTML
61 block.
62
63 Span-level HTML tags -- e.g. <span>, <cite>, or <del> -- can be used
64 anywhere in a Markdown paragraph, list item, or header. If you want, you
65 can even use HTML tags instead of Markdown formatting; e.g. if you'd pre‐
66 fer to use HTML <a> or <img> tags instead of Markdown's link or image
67 syntax, go right ahead.
68
69 Unlike block-level HTML tags, Markdown syntax *is* processed within span-
70 level tags.
71
72 Automatic Escaping for Special Characters
73 In HTML, there are two characters that demand special treatment: `<` and
74 `&`. Left angle brackets are used to start tags; ampersands are used to
75 denote HTML entities. If you want to use them as literal characters, you
76 must escape them as entities, e.g. `<`, and `&`.
77
78 Ampersands in particular are bedeviling for web writers. If you want to
79 write about 'AT&T', you need to write '`AT&T`'. You even need to
80 escape ampersands within URLs. Thus, if you want to link to:
81
82 http://images.google.com/images?num=30&q=larry+bird
83
84 you need to encode the URL as:
85
86 http://images.google.com/images?num=30&q=larry+bird
87
88 in your anchor tag `href` attribute. Needless to say, this is easy to
89 forget, and is probably the single most common source of HTML validation
90 errors in otherwise well-marked-up web sites.
91
92 Markdown allows you to use these characters naturally, taking care of all
93 the necessary escaping for you. If you use an ampersand as part of an
94 HTML entity, it remains unchanged; otherwise it will be translated into
95 `&`.
96
97 So, if you want to include a copyright symbol in your article, you can
98 write:
99
100 ©
101
102 and Markdown will leave it alone. But if you write:
103
104 AT&T
105
106 Markdown will translate it to:
107
108 AT&T
109
110 Similarly, because Markdown supports inline HTML, if you use angle brack‐
111 ets as delimiters for HTML tags, Markdown will treat them as such. But if
112 you write:
113
114 4 < 5
115
116 Markdown will translate it to:
117
118 4 < 5
119
120 However, inside Markdown code spans and blocks, angle brackets and amper‐
121 sands are *always* encoded automatically. This makes it easy to use Mark‐
122 down to write about HTML code. (As opposed to raw HTML, which is a terri‐
123 ble format for writing about HTML syntax, because every single `<` and
124 `&` in your example code needs to be escaped.)
125
127 Paragraphs and Line Breaks
128 A paragraph is simply one or more consecutive lines of text, separated by
129 one or more blank lines. (A blank line is any line that looks like a
130 blank line -- a line containing nothing but spaces or tabs is considered
131 blank.) Normal paragraphs should not be indented with spaces or tabs.
132
133 The implication of the "one or more consecutive lines of text" rule is
134 that Markdown supports "hard-wrapped" Dtext paragraphs. This differs sig‐
135 nificantly from most other text-to-HTML formatters (including Movable
136 Type's "Convert Line Breaks" option) which translate every line break
137 character in a paragraph into a `<br />` tag.
138
139 When you *do* want to insert a `<br />` break tag using Markdown, you end
140 a line with two or more spaces, then type return.
141
142 Yes, this takes a tad more effort to create a `<br />`, but a simplistic
143 "every line break is a `<br />`" rule wouldn't work for Markdown. Mark‐
144 down's email-style blockquoting
145 and multi-paragraph list items work best -- and look better -- when you
146 format them with hard breaks.
147
148 Headers
149 Markdown supports two styles of headers, Setext and atx.
150
151 Setext-style headers are ‘underlined’ using equal signs (for first-level
152 headers) and dashes (for second-level headers). For example:
153
154 This is an H1
155 =============
156
157 This is an H2
158 -------------
159
160 Any number of underlining `=`'s or `-`'s will work.
161
162 Atx-style headers use 1-6 hash characters at the start of the line, cor‐
163 responding to header levels 1-6. For example:
164
165 # This is an H1
166
167 ## This is an H2
168
169 ###### This is an H6
170
171 Optionally, you may "close" atx-style headers. This is purely cosmetic --
172 you can use this if you think it looks better. The closing hashes don't
173 even need to match the number of hashes used to open the header. (The
174 number of opening hashes determines the header level.) :
175
176 # This is an H1 #
177
178 ## This is an H2 ##
179
180 ### This is an H3 ######
181
182 Blockquotes
183 Markdown uses email-style `>` characters for blockquoting. If you're
184 familiar with quoting passages of text in an email message, then you know
185 how to create a blockquote in Markdown. It looks best if you hard wrap
186 the text and put a `>` before every line:
187
188 > This is a blockquote with two paragraphs. Lorem ipsum
189 > dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aliquam
190 > hendrerit mi posuere lectus. Vestibulum enim wisi,
191 > viverra nec, fringilla in, laoreet vitae, risus.
192 >
193 > Donec sit amet nisl. Aliquam semper ipsum sit amet
194 > velit. Suspendisse id sem consectetuer libero luctus
195 > adipiscing.
196
197 Markdown allows you to be lazy and only put the `>` before the first line
198 of a hard-wrapped paragraph:
199
200 > This is a blockquote with two paragraphs. Lorem ipsum
201 dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aliquam
202 hendrerit mi posuere lectus. Vestibulum enim wisi,
203 viverra nec, fringilla in, laoreet vitae, risus.
204
205 > Donec sit amet nisl. Aliquam semper ipsum sit amet
206 velit. Suspendisse id sem consectetuer libero luctus
207 adipiscing.
208
209 Blockquotes can be nested (i.e. a blockquote-in-a-blockquote) by adding
210 additional levels of `>`:
211
212 > This is the first level of quoting.
213 >
214 > > This is nested blockquote.
215 >
216 > Back to the first level.
217
218 Blockquotes can contain other Markdown elements, including headers,
219 lists, and code blocks:
220
221 > ## This is a header.
222 >
223 > 1. This is the first list item.
224 > 2. This is the second list item.
225 >
226 > Here's some example code:
227 >
228 > return shell_exec("echo $input | $markdown_script");
229
230 Any decent text editor should make email-style quoting easy. For example,
231 with BBEdit, you can make a selection and choose Increase Quote Level
232 from the Text menu.
233
234 Lists
235 Markdown supports ordered (numbered) and unordered (bulleted) lists.
236
237 Unordered lists use asterisks, pluses, and hyphens -- interchangably --
238 as list markers:
239
240 * Red
241 * Green
242 * Blue
243
244 is equivalent to:
245
246 + Red
247 + Green
248 + Blue
249
250 and:
251
252 - Red
253 - Green
254 - Blue
255
256 Ordered lists use numbers followed by periods:
257
258 1. Bird
259 2. McHale
260 3. Parish
261
262 It's important to note that the actual numbers you use to mark the list
263 have no effect on the HTML output Markdown produces. The HTML Markdown
264 produces from the above list is:
265
266 <ol>
267 <li>Bird</li>
268 <li>McHale</li>
269 <li>Parish</li>
270 </ol>
271
272 If you instead wrote the list in Markdown like this:
273
274 1. Bird
275 1. McHale
276 1. Parish
277
278 or even:
279
280 3. Bird
281 1. McHale
282 8. Parish
283
284 you'd get the exact same HTML output. The point is, if you want to, you
285 can use ordinal numbers in your ordered Markdown lists, so that the num‐
286 bers in your source match the numbers in your published HTML. But if you
287 want to be lazy, you don't have to.
288
289 If you do use lazy list numbering, however, you should still start the
290 list with the number 1. At some point in the future, Markdown may support
291 starting ordered lists at an arbitrary number.
292
293 List markers typically start at the left margin, but may be indented by
294 up to three spaces. List markers must be followed by one or more spaces
295 or a tab.
296
297 To make lists look nice, you can wrap items with hanging indents:
298
299 * Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing
300 elit. Aliquam hendrerit mi posuere lectus. Vestibulum
301 enim wisi, viverra nec, fringilla in, laoreet vitae,
302 risus.
303 * Donec sit amet nisl. Aliquam semper ipsum sit amet
304 velit. Suspendisse id sem consectetuer libero luctus
305 adipiscing.
306
307 But if you want to be lazy, you don't have to:
308
309 * Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing
310 elit. Aliquam hendrerit mi posuere lectus. Vestibulum
311 enim wisi, viverra nec, fringilla in, laoreet vitae,
312 risus.
313 * Donec sit amet nisl. Aliquam semper ipsum sit amet
314 velit. Suspendisse id sem consectetuer libero luctus
315 adipiscing.
316
317 If list items are separated by blank lines, Markdown will wrap the items
318 in `<p>` tags in the HTML output. For example, this input:
319
320 * Bird
321 * Magic
322
323 will turn into:
324
325 <ul>
326 <li>Bird</li>
327 <li>Magic</li>
328 </ul>
329
330 But this:
331
332 * Bird
333
334 * Magic
335
336 will turn into:
337
338 <ul>
339 <li><p>Bird</p></li>
340 <li><p>Magic</p></li>
341 </ul>
342
343 List items may consist of multiple paragraphs. Each subsequent paragraph
344 in a list item must be intended by either 4 spaces or one tab:
345
346 1. This is a list item with two paragraphs. Lorem ipsum
347 dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aliquam
348 hendrerit mi posuere lectus.
349
350 Vestibulum enim wisi, viverra nec, fringilla in,
351 laoreet vitae, risus. Donec sit amet nisl. Aliquam
352 semper ipsum sit amet velit.
353
354 2. Suspendisse id sem consectetuer libero luctus
355 adipiscing.
356
357 It looks nice if you indent every line of the subsequent paragraphs, but
358 here again, Markdown will allow you to be lazy:
359
360 * This is a list item with two paragraphs.
361
362 This is the second paragraph in the list item.
363 You're only required to indent the first line. Lorem
364 ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit.
365
366 * Another item in the same list.
367
368 To put a blockquote within a list item, the blockquote's `>` delimiters
369 need to be indented:
370
371 * A list item with a blockquote:
372
373 > This is a blockquote
374 > inside a list item.
375
376 To put a code block within a list item, the code block needs to be
377 indented *twice* -- 8 spaces or two tabs:
378
379 * A list item with a code block:
380
381 <code goes here>
382
383 It's worth noting that it's possible to trigger an ordered list by acci‐
384 dent, by writing something like this:
385
386 1986. What a great season.
387
388 In other words, a *number-period-space* sequence at the beginning of a
389 line. To avoid this, you can backslash-escape the period:
390
391 1986\. What a great season.
392
393 Code Blocks
394 Pre-formatted code blocks are used for writing about programming or
395 markup source code. Rather than forming normal paragraphs, the lines of a
396 code block are interpreted literally. Markdown wraps a code block in both
397 `<pre>` and `<code>` tags.
398
399 To produce a code block in Markdown, simply indent every line of the
400 block by at least 4 spaces or 1 tab. For example, given this input:
401
402 This is a normal paragraph:
403
404 This is a code block.
405
406 Markdown will generate:
407
408 <p>This is a normal paragraph:</p>
409
410 <pre><code>This is a code block.
411 </code></pre>
412
413 One level of indentation -- 4 spaces or 1 tab -- is removed from each
414 line of the code block. For example, this:
415
416 Here is an example of AppleScript:
417
418 tell application "Foo"
419 beep
420 end tell
421
422 will turn into:
423
424 <p>Here is an example of AppleScript:</p>
425
426 <pre><code>tell application "Foo"
427 beep
428 end tell
429 </code></pre>
430
431 A code block continues until it reaches a line that is not indented (or
432 the end of the article).
433
434 Within a code block, ampersands (`&`) and angle brackets (`<` and `>`)
435 are automatically converted into HTML entities. This makes it very easy
436 to include example HTML source code using Markdown -- just paste it and
437 indent it, and Markdown will handle the hassle of encoding the ampersands
438 and angle brackets. For example, this:
439
440 <div class="footer">
441 © 2004 Foo Corporation
442 </div>
443
444 will turn into:
445
446 <pre><code><div class="footer">
447 &copy; 2004 Foo Corporation
448 </div>
449 </code></pre>
450
451 Regular Markdown syntax is not processed within code blocks. E.g., aster‐
452 isks are just literal asterisks within a code block. This means it's also
453 easy to use Markdown to write about Markdown's own syntax.
454
455 Horizontal Rules
456 You can produce a horizontal rule tag (`<hr />`) by placing three or more
457 hyphens, asterisks, or underscores on a line by themselves. If you wish,
458 you may use spaces between the hyphens or asterisks. Each of the follow‐
459 ing lines will produce a horizontal rule:
460
461 * * *
462
463 ***
464
465 *****
466
467 - - -
468
469 ---------------------------------------
470
472 Links
473 Markdown supports two style of links: inline and reference.
474
475 In both styles, the link text is delimited by [square brackets].
476
477 To create an inline link, use a set of regular parentheses immediately
478 after the link text's closing square bracket. Inside the parentheses, put
479 the URL where you want the link to point, along with an *optional* title
480 for the link, surrounded in quotes. For example:
481
482 This is [an example](http://example.com/ "Title") inline link.
483
484 [This link](http://example.net/) has no title attribute.
485
486 Will produce:
487
488 <p>This is <a href="http://example.com/" title="Title">
489 an example</a> inline link.</p>
490
491 <p><a href="http://example.net/">This link</a> has no
492 title attribute.</p>
493
494 If you're referring to a local resource on the same server, you can use
495 relative paths:
496
497 See my [About](/about/) page for details.
498
499 Reference-style links use a second set of square brackets, inside which
500 you place a label of your choosing to identify the link:
501
502 This is [an example][id] reference-style link.
503
504 You can optionally use a space to separate the sets of brackets:
505
506 This is [an example] [id] reference-style link.
507
508 Then, anywhere in the document, you define your link label like this, on
509 a line by itself:
510
511 [id]: http://example.com/ "Optional Title Here"
512
513 That is:
514
515 · Square brackets containing the link identifier (optionally indented
516 from the left margin using up to three spaces);
517
518 · followed by a colon;
519
520 · followed by one or more spaces (or tabs);
521
522 · followed by the URL for the link;
523
524 · optionally followed by a title attribute for the link, enclosed in
525 double or single quotes, or enclosed in parentheses.
526
527 The following three link definitions are equivalent:
528
529 [foo]: http://example.com/ "Optional Title Here"
530 [foo]: http://example.com/ 'Optional Title Here'
531 [foo]: http://example.com/ (Optional Title Here)
532
533 Note: There is a known bug in Markdown.pl 1.0.1 which prevents single
534 quotes from being used to delimit link titles.
535
536 The link URL may, optionally, be surrounded by angle brackets:
537
538 [id]: <http://example.com/> "Optional Title Here"
539
540 You can put the title attribute on the next line and use extra spaces or
541 tabs for padding, which tends to look better with longer URLs:
542
543 [id]: http://example.com/longish/path/to/resource/here
544 "Optional Title Here"
545
546 Link definitions are only used for creating links during Markdown pro‐
547 cessing, and are stripped from your document in the HTML output.
548
549 Link definition names may constist of letters, numbers, spaces, and punc‐
550 tuation -- but they are not case sensitive. E.g. these two links:
551
552 [link text][a]
553 [link text][A]
554
555 are equivalent.
556
557 The implicit link name shortcut allows you to omit the name of the link,
558 in which case the link text itself is used as the name. Just use an
559 empty set of square brackets -- e.g., to link the word "Google" to the
560 google.com web site, you could simply write:
561
562 [Google][]
563
564 And then define the link:
565
566 [Google]: http://google.com/
567
568 Because link names may contain spaces, this shortcut even works for mul‐
569 tiple words in the link text:
570
571 Visit [Daring Fireball][] for more information.
572
573 And then define the link:
574
575 [Daring Fireball]: http://daringfireball.net/
576
577 Link definitions can be placed anywhere in your Markdown document. I tend
578 to put them immediately after each paragraph in which they're used, but
579 if you want, you can put them all at the end of your document, sort of
580 like footnotes.
581
582 Here's an example of reference links in action:
583
584 I get 10 times more traffic from [Google] [1] than from
585 [Yahoo] [2] or [MSN] [3].
586
587 [1]: http://google.com/ "Google"
588 [2]: http://search.yahoo.com/ "Yahoo Search"
589 [3]: http://search.msn.com/ "MSN Search"
590
591 Using the implicit link name shortcut, you could instead write:
592
593 I get 10 times more traffic from [Google][] than from
594 [Yahoo][] or [MSN][].
595
596 [google]: http://google.com/ "Google"
597 [yahoo]: http://search.yahoo.com/ "Yahoo Search"
598 [msn]: http://search.msn.com/ "MSN Search"
599
600 Both of the above examples will produce the following HTML output:
601
602 <p>I get 10 times more traffic from <a href="http://google.com/"
603 title="Google">Google</a> than from
604 <a href="http://search.yahoo.com/" title="Yahoo Search">Yahoo</a>
605 or
606 <a href="http://search.msn.com/" title="MSN Search">MSN</a>.</p>
607
608 For comparison, here is the same paragraph written using Markdown's
609 inline link style:
610
611 I get 10 times more traffic from
612 [Google](http://google.com/ "Google") than from
613 [Yahoo](http://search.yahoo.com/ "Yahoo Search") or
614 [MSN](http://search.msn.com/ "MSN Search").
615
616 The point of reference-style links is not that they're easier to write.
617 The point is that with reference-style links, your document source is
618 vastly more readable. Compare the above examples: using reference-style
619 links, the paragraph itself is only 81 characters long; with inline-style
620 links, it's 176 characters; and as raw HTML, it's 234 characters. In the
621 raw HTML, there's more markup than there is text.
622
623 With Markdown's reference-style links, a source document much more
624 closely resembles the final output, as rendered in a browser. By allowing
625 you to move the markup-related metadata out of the paragraph, you can add
626 links without interrupting the narrative flow of your prose.
627
628 Emphasis
629 Markdown treats asterisks (`*`) and underscores (`_`) as indicators of
630 emphasis. Text wrapped with one `*` or `_` will be wrapped with an HTML
631 `<em>` tag; double `*`'s or `_`'s will be wrapped with an HTML `<strong>`
632 tag. E.g., this input:
633
634 *single asterisks*
635
636 _single underscores_
637
638 **double asterisks**
639
640 __double underscores__
641
642 will produce:
643
644 <em>single asterisks</em>
645
646 <em>single underscores</em>
647
648 <strong>double asterisks</strong>
649
650 <strong>double underscores</strong>
651
652 You can use whichever style you prefer; the lone restriction is that the
653 same character must be used to open and close an emphasis span.
654
655 Emphasis can be used in the middle of a word:
656
657 un*fucking*believable
658
659 But if you surround an `*` or `_` with spaces, it'll be treated as a lit‐
660 eral asterisk or underscore.
661
662 To produce a literal asterisk or underscore at a position where it would
663 otherwise be used as an emphasis delimiter, you can backslash escape it:
664
665 \*this text is surrounded by literal asterisks\*
666
667 Code
668 To indicate a span of code, wrap it with backtick quotes (`` ` ``).
669 Unlike a pre-formatted code block, a code span indicates code within a
670 normal paragraph. For example:
671
672 Use the `printf()` function.
673
674 will produce:
675
676 <p>Use the <code>printf()</code> function.</p>
677
678 To include a literal backtick character within a code span, you can use
679 multiple backticks as the opening and closing delimiters:
680
681 ``There is a literal backtick (`) here.``
682
683 which will produce this:
684
685 <p><code>There is a literal backtick (`) here.</code></p>
686
687 The backtick delimiters surrounding a code span may include spaces -- one
688 after the opening, one before the closing. This allows you to place lit‐
689 eral backtick characters at the beginning or end of a code span:
690
691 A single backtick in a code span: `` ` ``
692
693 A backtick-delimited string in a code span: `` `foo` ``
694
695 will produce:
696
697 <p>A single backtick in a code span: <code>`</code></p>
698
699 <p>A backtick-delimited string in a code span: <code>`foo`</code></p>
700
701 With a code span, ampersands and angle brackets are encoded as HTML enti‐
702 ties automatically, which makes it easy to include example HTML tags.
703 Markdown will turn this:
704
705 Please don't use any `<blink>` tags.
706
707 into:
708
709 <p>Please don't use any <code><blink></code> tags.</p>
710
711 You can write this:
712
713 `—` is the decimal-encoded equivalent of `—`.
714
715 to produce:
716
717 <p><code>&#8212;</code> is the decimal-encoded
718 equivalent of <code>&mdash;</code>.</p>
719
720 Images
721 Admittedly, it's fairly difficult to devise a "natural" syntax for plac‐
722 ing images into a plain text document format.
723
724 Markdown uses an image syntax that is intended to resemble the syntax for
725 links, allowing for two styles: inline and reference.
726
727 Inline image syntax looks like this:
728
729 ![Alt text](/path/to/img.jpg)
730
731 ![Alt text](/path/to/img.jpg =Optional size "Optional title")
732
733 That is:
734
735 · An exclamation mark: `!`;
736
737 · followed by a set of square brackets, containing the `alt` attribute
738 text for the image;
739
740 · followed by a set of parentheses, containing the URL or path to the
741 image, an optional `size` attribute (in width c height format) pre‐
742 fixed with a `=`, and an optional `title` attribute enclosed in dou‐
743 ble or single quotes.
744
745 Reference-style image syntax looks like this:
746
747 ![Alt text][id]
748
749 Where "id" is the name of a defined image reference. Image references are
750 defined using syntax identical to link references:
751
752 [id]: url/to/image =Optional size "Optional title attribute"
753
755 Automatic Links
756 Markdown supports a shortcut style for creating "automatic" links for
757 URLs and email addresses: simply surround the URL or email address with
758 angle brackets. What this means is that if you want to
759 show the actual text of a URL or email address, and also have it be
760 a clickable link, you can do this:
761
762 <http://example.com/>
763
764 Markdown will turn this into:
765
766 <a href="http://example.com/">http://example.com/</a>
767
768 Automatic links for email addresses work similarly, except that Markdown
769 will also perform a bit of randomized decimal and hex entity-encoding to
770 help obscure your address from address-harvesting spambots. For example,
771 Markdown will turn this:
772
773 <address@example.com>
774
775 into something like this:
776
777 <a href="mailto:addre
778 ss@example.co
779 m">address@exa
780 mple.com</a>
781
782 which will render in a browser as a clickable link to
783 "address@example.com".
784
785 (This sort of entity-encoding trick will indeed fool many, if not most,
786 address-harvesting bots, but it definitely won't fool all of them. It's
787 better than nothing, but an address published in this way will probably
788 eventually start receiving spam.)
789
790 Backslash Escapes
791 Markdown allows you to use backslash escapes to generate literal charac‐
792 ters which would otherwise have special meaning in Markdown's formatting
793 syntax. For example, if you wanted to surround a word with literal aster‐
794 isks (instead of an HTML `<em>` tag), you add backslashes before the
795 asterisks, like this:
796
797 \*literal asterisks\*
798
799 Markdown provides backslash escapes for the following characters:
800 backslash
801 ` backtick
802 * asterisk
803 _ underscore
804 curly braces
805 [] square brackets
806 () parentheses
807 # hash mark
808 + plus sign
809 - minus sign (hyphen)
810 . dot
811 exclamation mark
812
814 Markdown assumes that tabs are set to 4 spaces.
815
817 John Gruber http://daringfireball.net/
818
820 markdown(1), markdown(3), mkd-callbacks(3), mkd-functions(3),
821 mkd-extensions(7).
822
823 http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown
824 http://docutils.sourceforge.net/mirror/setext.html
825 http://www.aaronsw.com/2002/atx/
826 http://textism.com/tools/textile/
827 http://docutils.sourceforge.net/rst.html
828 http://www.triptico.com/software/grutatxt.html
829 http://ettext.taint.org/doc/
830
831MASTODON Dec 22, 2007 MASTODON