Markdown is a lightweight and easy-to-use syntax for styling all forms of writing on the GitHub platform.
Overview The GitHub document format generates GitHub compatible markdown (.md) files which are subsequently rendered to HTML when viewed on GitHub. The keepmd option of the HTML document format has traditionally been used for creating GitHub documents, however the githubdocument format has several advantages.
What you will learn:
Markdown is a way to style text on the web. You control the display of the document; formatting words as bold or italic, adding images, and creating lists are just a few of the things we can do with Markdown. Mostly, Markdown is just regular text with a few non-alphabetic characters thrown in, like #
or *
.
You can use Markdown most places around GitHub:
.md
or .markdown
extensionFor more information, see “Writing on GitHub” in the GitHub Help.
Here’s an overview of Markdown syntax that you can use anywhere on GitHub.com or in your own text files.
GitHub.com uses its own version of the Markdown syntax that provides an additional set of useful features, many of which make it easier to work with content on GitHub.com.
Note that some features of GitHub Flavored Markdown are only available in the descriptions and comments of Issues and Pull Requests. These include @mentions as well as references to SHA-1 hashes, Issues, and Pull Requests. Task Lists are also available in Gist comments and in Gist Markdown files.
Here’s an example of how you can use syntax highlighting with GitHub Flavored Markdown:
You can also simply indent your code by four spaces:
Here’s an example of Python code without syntax highlighting:
If you include a task list in the first comment of an Issue, you will get a handy progress indicator in your issue list. It also works in Pull Requests!
You can create tables by assembling a list of words and dividing them with hyphens -
(for the first row), and then separating each column with a pipe |
:
Would become:
First Header | Second Header |
---|---|
Content from cell 1 | Content from cell 2 |
Content in the first column | Content in the second column |
Any reference to a commit’s SHA-1 hash will be automatically converted into a link to that commit on GitHub.
Any number that refers to an Issue or Pull Request will be automatically converted into a link.
Typing an @
symbol, followed by a username, will notify that person to come and view the comment. This is called an “@mention”, because you’re mentioning the individual. You can also @mention teams within an organization.
Any URL (like http://www.github.com/
) will be automatically converted into a clickable link.
Any word wrapped with two tildes (like ~~this~~
) will appear crossed out.
GitHub supports emoji!
To see a list of every image we support, check out the Emoji Cheat Sheet.
Last updated Jan 15, 2014