Writing in markdown

Software basics

One of the absolute best ways to write markdown files is to use Visual Studio Code and install the Markdown All in One plugin that adds highlighting and assistive features when you’re editing a .md file. This is extremely useful. Some usage examples are shown on the link.

Text basics

Writing text and clicking enter to get to the next line just continues your current line. If you write two spaces at the end of the line and click enter, it becomes a new line.

However, to get a new paragraph like I just did, you have to leave a whole empty line between this text and the previous.

Headings

You write headings from level 1 to 6 (size and hierarchy) by preceding these headings with the pound (#) symbol X amount of times:

# Title of my blog post

## A heading 2 in my blog post

### And, wow, a heading 3!

These headings show up in the right hand menu.

Normal formatting

Additionally, there’s these normal awesome text formatting things:

• This is italicized
• This is phatt**
• This is crossed out
• Oh my, there’s also a list in the middle of it all
  • Sub points 2 spaces in
• with checkmarks!

These are written as such:

\- \[ \] \*This is italicized\*
\- \[ \] \*\*This is phatt\*\*
\- \[ \] \~\~This is crossed out\~\~
\- \[ \] Oh my, there's also a list in the middle of it all
\- \[ \] Sub points 2 spaces in
\- \[x\] with checkmarks!

Ordered list:

\1 Text
\2 Text
\3 Text

I might want to write other stuff as well. Maybe even a link to some cool stuff by writing [text](link). To quickly create links from URLs like this https://gitlab.com/aucogseers/CogSite, write <https://gitlab.com/aucogseers/CogSite>. You can also reference other sections on the post by referring to their titles like this: Writing in markdown [Writing in markdown](#writing-in-markdown)

You might also want an image like this in your post:

You can get this by writing .

You can see how these characters are used by the formatting (*, [], ()). If you want to use them without affecting formatting, just but a backslash in front of the symbol as such: \*, \[\], \(\).

To create a line like this…

…write either ***, --- or ________. The output will look the same. And remember to put blank lines before and after the line.

Special text formatting

I can write in-line code like this in-line code by writing `in-line code` and create a code block like this…

# This is a code block
WriteBlogPost(new DateTime(DateTime.now()));

…by writing it like this:

```javascript // Put your javascript code here // Replace the “javascript” tag with another language (like “python”) and it will create syntax highlighting ```

Quotes like this…

This is a multi-line quote text

…are written like this:

\> This is a multi-line
\> quote text

Emojis

You can write emojis like these:

See more smiley codes here.

Advanced structure formatting

You can write a table like this…

…by writing:

\| First row item               | Another one!                  |
\| ---------------------------- | ----------------------------- |
\| This is some content, though | Even more! When will it stop? |