Return to the markdown wiki

Markdown is a lightweight markup language. The language takes many cues from existing conventions for marking up plain text in email; it is designed for maximum readability and "publishability" of both its input and output forms.

It is used across the entire Stack Exchange network for formatting. Markdown is used for: Questions, Answers, Wikis, Chat and Comments -- although not all features are enabled in all contexts.

References:

• Markdown help
• How do I format my posts using Markdown or HTML?
• The Formatting Sandbox -- which you can use to test out Markdown formatting.
• MarkdownSharp - Server-side source code
• PageDown - Client-side source code

Note that some sites also support mathjax. See the MathJax wiki for more information.

Potential Gotchas:

• Code block is not properly formatted when placed immediately after a list item

Markdown is a lightweight markup language. The language takes many cues from existing conventions for marking up plain text in email; it is designed for maximum readability and "publishability" of both its input and output forms.

It is used across the entire Stack Exchange network for formatting. Markdown is used for: Questions, Answers, Wikis, Chat and Comments -- although not all features are enabled in all contexts.

References:

• Markdown help
• How do I format my posts using Markdown or HTML?
• The Formatting Sandbox -- which you can use to test out Markdown formatting.
• MarkdownSharp - Server-side source code
• PageDown - Client-side source code

Note that some sites also support mathjax. See the MathJax wiki for more information.

Potential Gotchas:

• Code block is not properly formatted when placed immediately after a list item

Switch to CommonMark:

In June 2020 Stack Exchange announced We're switching to CommonMark for posts. Questions specific to using the new markup language should be asked using the commonmark tag.

Markdown is a lightweight markup language. The language takes many cues from existing conventions for marking up plain text in email; it is designed for maximum readability and "publishability" of both its input and output forms.

It is used across the entire Stack Exchange network for formatting. Markdown is used for: Questions, Answers, Wikis, Chat and Comments -- although not all features are enabled in all contexts.

References:

• Markdown help
• How do I format my posts using Markdown or HTML?
• The Formatting Sandbox -- which you can use to test out Markdown formatting.
• MarkdownSharp - Server-side source code
• PageDown - Client-side source code

Note that some sites also support mathjax. See the MathJax wiki for more information.

• Code block is not properly formatted when placed immediately after a list item

Markdown is a lightweight markup language. The language takes many cues from existing conventions for marking up plain text in email; it is designed for maximum readability and "publishability" of both its input and output forms.

It is used across the entire Stack Exchange network for formatting. Markdown is used for: Questions, Answers, Wikis, Chat and Comments -- although not all features are enabled in all contexts.

References:

• Markdown help
• How do I format my posts using Markdown or HTML?
• The Formatting Sandbox -- which you can use to test out Markdown formatting.
• MarkdownSharp - Server-side source code
• PageDown - Client-side source code

Note that some sites also support mathjax. See the MathJax wiki for more information.

Potential Gotchas:

• Code block is not properly formatted when placed immediately after a list item

Markdown is a lightweight markup language. The language takes many cues from existing conventions for marking up plain text in email; it is designed for maximum readability and "publishability" of both its input and output forms.

It is used across the entire Stack Exchange network for formatting. Markdown is used for: Questions, Answers, Wikis, Chat and Comments -- although not all features are enabled in all contexts.

References:

• Markdown help
• How do I format my posts using Markdown or HTML?
• The Formatting Sandbox -- which you can use to test out Markdown formatting.
• MarkdownSharp - Server-side source code
• PageDown - Client-side source code

Note that some sites also support mathjax. See the Mathjax wiki for more information.

• Code block is not properly formatted when placed immediately after a list item

Markdown is a lightweight markup language. The language takes many cues from existing conventions for marking up plain text in email; it is designed for maximum readability and "publishability" of both its input and output forms.

It is used across the entire Stack Exchange network for formatting. Markdown is used for: Questions, Answers, Wikis, Chat and Comments -- although not all features are enabled in all contexts.

References:

• Markdown help
• How do I format my posts using Markdown or HTML?
• The Formatting Sandbox -- which you can use to test out Markdown formatting.
• MarkdownSharp - Server-side source code
• PageDown - Client-side source code

Note that some sites also support mathjax. See the MathJax wiki for more information.

• Code block is not properly formatted when placed immediately after a list item