Markdown Cheat Sheet

Thanks for visiting The Markdown Guide!

This Markdown cheat sheet provides a quick overview of all the Markdown syntax elements. It can’t cover every edge case, so if you need more information about any of these elements, refer to the reference guides for basic syntax and extended syntax.

Basic Syntax

These are the elements outlined in John Gruber’s original design document. All Markdown applications support these elements.

Heading

H1

H2

H3

Bold

bold text

Italic

italicized text

Blockquote

blockquote

Ordered List

First item
Second item
Third item

Unordered List

First item
Second item
Third item

Code

code

Horizontal Rule

Link

Markdown Guide

Image

alt text

Extended Syntax

These elements extend the basic syntax by adding additional features. Not all Markdown applications support these elements.

Table

Syntax	Description
Header	Title
Paragraph	Text

Fenced Code Block

1
2
3
4
5
{
  "firstName": "John",
  "lastName": "Smith",
  "age": 25
}

Footnote

Here’s a sentence with a footnote. ¹

Heading ID

My Great Heading

Definition List

term: definition

Strikethrough

~~The world is flat.~~

Task List

Write the press release
Update the website
Contact the media

Emoji

That is so funny! :joy:

(See also Copying and Pasting Emoji)

Highlight

I need to highlight these ==very important words==.

Subscript

H~2~O

Superscript

X^2^

This is the footnote. ↩︎