Markdown Formatting Guide
Pine.blog uses Markdown for formatting posts. Markdown is a simple, text-based formatting language that gives you powerful tools to format your posts without crowding your posts with lots of complex symbols and confusing coding.
This guide demonstrates how to use Markdown to format your posts.
Titles
Markdown uses the pound sign (or hashtag symbol) # for designating a title. There are six different title sizes that are supported which is notated by the number of # symbols you use. # must appear at the beginning of a line. Min-line # symbols are ignored.
By default, the title of a post is styled as Title 1.
Title 1
# Title 1
Title 2
## Title 2
Title 3
### Title 3
Title 4
#### Title 4
Title 5
##### Title 5
Title 6
###### Title 6
Bold and Italics
You can use either astricks * or underscores _ to mark text as bold or italicized. One asterisk or underscore denotes italics, two denotes bolded.
The middle of this sentence is italicized.
The middle of *this sentence* is _italicized_.
The middle of this sentence is bolded.
The middle of **this sentence** is __italicized__.
Paragraphs
This is the most commonly confusing aspect of using Markdown. In order for Markdown to separate text into paragraphs, you must specify an empty line between the text, not just a single line ending.
This text will be marked as a seperate paragraph from the one below it. This is because it has 1 blank line between it and the following paragraph, which is required in Markdown.
This paragraph might look seperate from the next one, but Markdown will render them as the same paragraph.
Even though there's a line break, there isn't a blank line above this one.
Links
Markdown gives you a lot of flexibility when adding links to your posts. The easiest way to add a link is wrapping the text in brackets [] and adding the link right afterwards in parentheses (). The format looks like this:
[text goes here](link goes here)
Example
Check out this link! Thanks to @jen for pointing this out!
Check out [this link!](http://mycoolsite.com) Thanks to @jen for pointing this out!
Link Aliases
Sometimes though, your longer paragraphs will get harder to read if you add links this way. It help with this, Markdown supports adding links aliases after the text and then adding the URL later on. You can add aliases by adding [alias name] after the link text. Just make sure to add the links for any aliases later in the post otherwise your post won't look right.
surrounding text [link text][alias] and then more surrounding text
[alias]: http://mycoolsite.com
Example
Just finished the next installment of The Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson. It was awesome. I can't believe that I have to wait another 2 years for the next book!
Just finished the next installment of [The Stormlight Archive][stormlight] by [Brandon Sanderson][sanderson]. It was awesome. I can't believe that I have to wait another 2 years for the next book!
[stormlight]: https://brandonsanderson.com/oathbringer-is-finally-out/
[sanderson]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandon_Sanderson
Images
Images are similar to links, but they have an exclamation mark ! before them. The image description is optional, you can leave it empty, but you must add the brackets [].
It's important to add an image description, because if for some reason the reader can't download your image, the description will show up in its place.
An image with a description.
An image with no description
All images are fullscreen, rounded, and have a pleasant shadow added to them.
Block Quotes
Block quotes (long uninterrupted quotes from another author) are easily added to any paragraph by adding the greater-than sign > before the text. Block quotes are styled as an excerpt with a different text color and vertical bar separating it from the rest of the text.
> It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light...
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light...
Code and Formatted Text
If you need to add code samples, or preformatted text (like the examples above), you can use use the backtick ` character. For longer blocks of code or text, you can indent the text with a multiple of 4 spaces. Hitting the tab key will do the right thing by default.
This sentence has a `bit of code in it`.
This is an indented section of preformatted text.
This sentence has a bit of code in it.
This is an indented section of preformatted text.
Adding HTML
Pine.blog allows for a subset of HTML tags to be used in posts. Mostly, these tags are available in Markdown but it might be easier for some layouts to use HTML directly.
The following HTML tags are safe to use in posts.
a, b, blockquote, div, br, code, del, em, i, li, ol, p, strong, sup, u, ul,