Explain Markdown code

What this Markdown sample shows

headings and emphasis

# starts the main heading and ## a section heading; they came out as <h1> and <h2>. Two stars make bold and one makes italic: **PDF invoice** became <strong> and *day/month/year* became <em>. [changelog](CHANGELOG.md) is a link with its text in the brackets and its address in the parentheses.

lists

Lines starting with a number and a dot make a numbered list, and lines starting with - a bullet list. The numbers you type don't have to count up: writing 1. on every line still gave one <ol> with three items. Only the first number matters, and a list that starts at 3. became <ol start="3">.

code

Single backticks mark code inside a sentence, such as rates.toml. Three backticks on their own lines fence a block, and the word after them names the language: the block came out as <pre><code class="language-sh">, with the quotes in the command escaped as ".

quotes and tables

> makes a quote, <blockquote>. A table is rows of cells between | marks, and the row of dashes splits the header from the body: the renderer made <th> cells for Flag and Meaning and <td> cells below. The columns don't have to line up for it to work.

Good to know

• Rendered with markdown-it 15.0.3, which follows CommonMark and also renders tables like the one here.
• A # needs a space after it: #Install stayed a normal paragraph with the # showing.
• Underscores inside a word are left alone: get_user_name came out as written. Stars are not: 2*3*4 turned the 3 into italics, and 2\*3\*4 with backslashes showed the stars.
• Four spaces at the start of a line, after a blank line, make a code block: the indented line came out in <pre><code>.

Watch out: A single line break doesn't start a new line. Line one and Line two on back-to-back lines came out in one paragraph and show as one line. End the first line with two spaces or a backslash to get a <br>, or leave a blank line between them to make two paragraphs.