DEV Community

Cover image for GitHub Markdown Cheat Sheet for Hacktoberfest
Mohammad-Ali A'RÂBI
Mohammad-Ali A'RÂBI

Posted on

GitHub Markdown Cheat Sheet for Hacktoberfest

#hacktoberfest #markdown #github

Markdown is a lightweight markup language, mostly used for writing readmes, but also books and other types of documents. Each platform supporting Markdown usually adds its own flavors to it. GitHub is no exception, just recently adding support for writing mathematical formulae.

For Hacktoberfest, you're going to read and/or write a lot of documentation, most of them in Markdown. Comments and pull request descriptions on GitHub and GitLab are in Markdown. Even this article on DEV.to is written in Markdown. You can see the article's source file here on GitHub.

TL;DR

This is a GitHub-flavored Markdown cheatsheet focusing on less-known features.

Table of Contents

Headings

Similar to HTML, there are 6 headings in Markdown:

# H1
## H2
### H3
#### H4
##### H5
###### H6
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Try to use heading level 1 for the title of your document, h2 for the sections, h3 for subsections, and so on.

Alternate Headings

There is an alternate way of creating headings that only supports two levels:

Heading Level 1
===============

Heading Level 2
---------------
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Paragraphs

Paragraphs are chunks of text separated by at least a blank line:

This is paragraph 1.

This is paragraph 2.
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Line Breaks

Line break is less know to the Markdown world.

It is achieved by adding at least two spaces to the end of the line:

This is line 1.  
This is line 2.
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

It's less known, because it's invisible. But, try it out.

Emphasis

There are three ways to emphasize:

  • Bold
  • Italic
  • Bold and italic

Making bold can be done by double underscores or double asterisks:

This is __bold__, so is **this**.
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

But inside a word, only the asterisks work:

**Thi**s **i**s a **GitH**ub-**flavor**ed **Markdo**wn **cheatshe**et **focusi**ng **o**n **les**s-**kno**wn **featur**es.
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

To make italic, use one underscore or one asterisk, and again, inside a middle only the asterisk syntax works:

This is _italic_, so is *this*. And it's not *un*important.
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

And to make something bold and italic, one can mix the two syntaxes:

All of these are: ***bandi***, _**bandi**_, **_bandi_**, __*bandi*__, *__bandi__*, ___bandi___.
And inside the word: b***and***i which means bold***and***italic.
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Inline Code

To write code in monospace font inside a regular text, enclose it in backticks:

This is `code` inside text.
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

If you want to write a code that has backticks in it, you can use double-backticks:

This is the syntax: ``This is `code` inside a text.``
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Code Block

To create a code block, put four spaces or a tab before it:

This is the code:

    for i in range(10):
        pass
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

The alternative syntax is wrapping the code in three backticks.

This is the code:

`‌``
for i in range(10):
    pass
``‌`
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

To display triple backticks in a code block, wrap them inside quadruple backticks.

The alternative syntax is wrapping the code in three backticks.

``‌``
This is the code:

`‌``
for i in range(10):
    pass
``‌`
``‌``
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

To display triple and quadruple backticks inside a code block, wrap them inside quadruple backticks and put a zero-width non-joiner inside the quadruple backticks you want to display.

Code Block with Syntax Highlighting

To create a code block with syntax highlighting, you can use the three backtick syntax and write the language name in front of it:

This is the code:

`‌`‌`python
for i in range(10):
    pass
`‌`‌`
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

As of now, some 583 languages are being supported for syntax highlighting. You can access the full list here.

Blockquotes

Blockquotes are designated by a > in front of them:

> Veniet tempus quo ista quae nunc latent in lucem dies extrahat et longioris aevi diligentia.
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Use double > to create nested blockquotes.

Georg Cantor quoted:

Veniet tempus quo ista quae nunc latent in lucem dies extrahat et longioris aevi diligentia.

Ordered Lists

To create an ordered list:

1. First item
2. Second item
3. Third item
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

The number can be out of order:

1. First item (indexed 1)
1. Second item (indexed 1)
5. Third item (indexed 5)
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Markdown still fixes the counters and outputs the correct numbers:

  1. First item (indexed 1)
  2. Second item (indexed 1)
  3. Third item (indexed 5)

Unordered Lists

To create unordered lists, use any of the following "bullet characters": hyphen -, asterisk *, or plus sign +:

- Item
- Another item
- Yet another item
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

One can mix the bullet characters in one list, but it's a bad practice.

Task Lists

A task list (aka checklist or todo list) is an unordered list with each item having a checkbox in front, either checked or unchecked. Tasks lists are very useful when writing issues on GitHub, as one can then check or uncheck them without manually editing the Markdown source of the comment or description.

- [x] Write the tests
- [ ] Implement the functions
- [ ] Fix the code formatting
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Horizontal Line

To create a horizontal line, use three or more asterisks (***), hyphens (---), or underscores (___):

Some text!

---

Next chapter or something!
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

URLs and Email Addresses

To turn URLs and email addresses into links, just wrap them into angle brackets:

Take a look at my Medium posts: <https://aerabi.medium.com>
You can also email me at <mohammad-ali@aerabi.com>
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Links

To create a link, enclose the linked text in brackets and then immediately the URL in parentheses:

Take a look at my [Medium posts](https://aerabi.medium.com/).
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

You can also add a title to the link that shows as a tooltip:

Take a look at my [Medium posts](https://aerabi.medium.com/ "Git Weekly is published there!").
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Take a look at my Medium posts.

Images

Image syntax is similar to that of links, only it has an exclamation mark in front and the text is the alt text:

![My GitHub avatar](https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/u/44623032?v=4)
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Subscript and Superscript

One might want to write about H2O or BatmanTM.

One might want to write about H<sub>2</sub>O or Batman<sup>TM</sup>.
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Mathematics

One can write LaTeX-style mathematical formulae in GitHub-flavored Markdown now:

I know why $e^{i\pi} + 1 = 0$. And I also know that:

$$ \frac{G}{\mathrm{Ker}(\phi)} \cong \mathrm{Im}(\phi). $$
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Output:

LaTeX formula support on GitHub

That fact that I had to upload a file, means that DEV.to doesn't support math in Markdown.

Tables

Tables are cool:

| Tables        | Are           | Cool  |
| ------------- |:-------------:| -----:|
| col 3 is      | right-aligned | $1600 |
| col 2 is      | centered      |   $12 |
| zebra stripes | are neat      |    $1 |
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

DEV.to renders the table, but doesn't support aligning in it:

Tables Are Cool
col 3 is right-aligned $1600
col 2 is centered $12
zebra stripes are neat $1

Emojis

Emojis can be written by using colons, hurray! 🎉

Emojis can be written by using colons, hurray! :tada:
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Emojipedia has the GitHub shortcodes for emojis, e.g. 🏖️ Beach with Umbrella.

HTML

One can use HTML tags in Markdown as well.

One can use <b>HTML</b> tags in Markdown as well.
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Comments

To hide contents in a Markdown document, one can use the HTML comment syntax:

<!-- This is comment and won't be rendered! -->
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Footnotes

To write footnotes, you can add the footnote annotation:

My name is A'rabi.[^1]
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

And then add the footnote somewhere else (e.g. at the end of the document):

[^1]: A'rabi means nomand.
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Table of Contents

Let's assume you have the following heading in your document:

## Links

## Images

## Subscript and Superscript

## Mathematics
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

You can create a table of contents by creating links to each heading title, by all small and hyphen-separated:

* [Links](#links)
* [Images](#images)
* [Subscript and Superscript](#subscript-and-superscript)
* [Mathematics](#mathematics)
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

References

Top comments (0)

Read next

leamsigc profile image

⚡ 🚀 Top 10 Trending GitHub Repositories, October 28, 2024 🔥

Ismael Garcia -

robertobutti profile image

Hacktoberfest 2024: Celebrating Open-Source and Community Collaboration! 🎉

Roberto B. -

sunrisepeak profile image

当用计算机思维进行Logo设计时? | D2Learn开源社区

sunrisepeak -

ugifractal profile image

github action services: mysql, redis and elasticsearch

sugiarto -