Preview
Video Player
00:00
00:00
Headlines, Paragraphs, and Basic Formatting with Markdown
10:27Learn how to format all the basic parts of a document, including headlines, paragraphs, bolding, italics, block quotes, and horizontal rules. We'll be practicing all of these concepts by building a cheat sheet document that you can use as a reference later. We'll continue building upon this document as we go.
I learned markdown from a cheat sheet.
0:00
And I still reference cheat sheets when I
can't remember how to format something.
0:02
But cheat sheet is just a document with
notes that you can reference when needed.
0:06
It's impossible to remember
everything about any coding language.
0:10
So this type of reference document,
or cheat sheet, is helpful.
0:14
I thought it might be nice to
create a cheat sheet together.
0:18
If you follow along with these videos,
you will by the end of the course,
0:20
have a mark down cheat sheet for
your own reference.
0:24
That's right, we're going to use
markdown to make a markdown reference.
0:26
Enough of my mug,
let's see my screen and go from there.
0:31
In this video,
I'll cover creating headlines, paragraphs,
0:34
quotes, bolding and italicizing text,
and creating horizontal rules.
0:38
In the previous video,
I created the headline.
0:44
To format a headline, or heading,
in markdown, you use a pound symbol or
0:46
#, and then the text that you
wanna use for your heading.
0:52
That's why markdown basics is large and
bold over here in our preview.
0:56
It's formatted as a first level heading.
1:00
The most common way to render
markdown is with HTML.
1:03
Basically our final document will be
translated into HTML for use on the web.
1:07
HTML provides six levels of headings.
1:12
For this reason, we have six levels
of headings in markdown too.
1:15
Again, you don't need to know any HTML.
1:19
I bring it up here only to
provide some background.
1:21
You type that single hash to create
the largest, or first level, heading.
1:24
A second level heading uses two
hashes next to each other followed by
1:29
a space in your text.
1:32
The rest of the headlines
just use another hash.
1:34
The first section of our cheat
sheet will be about headlines,
1:37
paragraphs and basic formatting, so
let's add that as a second level heading.
1:40
So type one, two hashes, space and
1:45
then our text which is Headlines,
1:50
Paragraphs, and Basic Formatting.
1:55
Now beneath this larger topic,
we've been talking about headlines and
2:00
since we're creating a cheat sheet
together, let's create that as a third
2:05
level heading, so one, two, three,
and we'll call this headlines.
2:09
Now, to save us a little bit of time,
2:15
I'm going to just copy some headlines that
I already have and paste them in here.
2:18
And you can see our fourth, fifth and
sixth level headings, here in our preview.
2:26
We'll create some more heading as we go.
2:34
But I think this is enough
demonstration for now.
2:35
Let's delete this starter text and write
our paragraphs and line break section.
2:38
So I'll add that as another
third level heading.
2:44
We'll call this Paragraphs and
Line Breaks.
2:49
We create paragraphs by typing
the way we would in any other program.
2:57
Just hit Return twice to
start another paragraph.
3:01
There is really nothing
special about the paragraph.
3:03
Where you see empty space
between blocks of text and
3:07
your mark down document you will
see empty space separating those
3:10
blocks of text in your
formatted HTML document.
3:13
I'm going to save us a little time again
and just paste in two paragraphs here.
3:16
As you can see we have space here which
corresponds to our space over here.
3:23
Now to make this a little easier to see
I'm just gonna add a bunch of returns
3:28
in here that's not important for
3:32
the document but it just makes it
a little easier to see in the video.
3:35
Now you don't always want that space that
appears between one line of text and
3:39
another when you're creating line breaks.
3:44
For example, lines of poetry or
3:46
song lyrics don't typically have spaces
between them the way paragraphs do.
3:48
To add just a Line Break without a space
type two spaces at the end of the line and
3:53
then press Return once.
3:58
Let's practice this by adding a stanza
from Pablo Neruda's Sonnet number 17.
4:00
So I'll just type the first line here.
4:05
And then this is the end of our first
line so I'll type one, two spaces.
4:14
Return and my second line.
4:20
And this is the end of my second line,
so one, two, return.
4:24
And our third line,
4:29
And again, one, two.
4:41
And now to save us a little bit of
time I'm just going to copy the last
4:43
two lines of the stanza as well as our
attribution and paste them into our doc.
4:46
Okay, and
if we scroll down in our preview,
4:53
we can see that this is working
mostly the way we expect.
4:55
However, here between, any and
other, we should have a line break.
4:59
So, we can just come up and
fix that one two.
5:06
And you can see it fixed
here in the preview.
5:10
And then don't worry about this too much,
this is just the attribution for
5:13
the book that I pulled this stanza out of.
5:17
You can definitely check it out if you
want, Pablo Neruda stuff is great.
5:20
So let me come over here and we will add
another heading for our next section,
5:24
which is Emphasis and Bolding.
5:28
The ability to italicize and bold text
is a must for any formatting tool.
5:36
Markdown makes it easy.
5:40
Let's start with emphasis which
will show up as italicized text.
5:41
Now, I'm gonna throw in a fourth
level heading here for italics,
5:46
it might seem like overkill but I like
to keep things as organized as possible.
5:50
So one two three four italics, and
5:53
then I'll throw in again just a bunch
more returns, and that's just to make it.
5:58
Easy for us to see.
6:03
Now, emphasis can be added by
placing either the asterisk or
6:05
the underscore characters on both sides
of the text that you wanna format.
6:09
So, this works and
6:13
this Works too.
6:18
If we scroll down in our preview you can
see works as italicized in both places.
6:25
I recommend using the * like this because
it's preferred by the type of mark down
6:31
used on GitHub which is a popular
service used by programmers,
6:36
we mentioned it earlier.
6:39
Also, in coding languages such as Python,
the underscore character is used often,
6:41
so it's nice to have the underscore
stand out as part of your text
6:45
rather than allowing it to be mistaken for
Markdown syntax.
6:48
Bolding is just like italicizing text but
you add another asterisk or
6:54
underscore on both sides of the text.
6:58
So, this works and
7:01
this Works too.
7:06
And again you can see down in the preview
our text is bold in both places.
7:12
Again, I prefer the asterisk
to the underscore.
7:19
The important thing is to be
consistent pick one of the options and
7:22
stick to it throughout the markdown file.
7:26
You can even bold and italicize
text at the same time, like this.
7:28
So we have two for the bolding,
one for the italics, and
7:36
again both sides of the text.
7:41
And this would work too, again one for
7:44
italics, two for bolding, and
7:50
you can see here on our preview works
is italicized abled in both places.
7:55
All right,
we've covered some core topics but
8:01
there are two more things
to see in this video.
8:03
The Blockquote and the Horizontal Rule.
8:05
A blockquote sets text apart
from the rest of the document.
8:08
As the name implies,
it's often use for quotes,
8:11
more specifically it indicates that
the text is quoted from another source.
8:14
So let's thrown in a third
level heading for Blockquotes.
8:18
And then to save us a little time,
I have a quote all ready to paste in here,
8:25
from the creator of Markdown,
John Gruber, paste that there.
8:31
Now you might've noticed something.
8:38
The Blockquote is formatted
using the greater than symbol.
8:40
If you want the blockquote
to span multiple paragraphs
8:44
the greater than symbol needs to appear on
the empty space between paragraph as well.
8:48
Now let's scroll down in our preview.
8:53
And you can see the way Adam is
displaying this we have this bar,
8:55
beside the Blockquote, the background
is a slightly different color.
8:59
And we have our text all indented and
separated out from the rest of the text.
9:03
So you can see there's just
a little bit formatting for
9:09
a Blockquote to separate it out.
9:12
Okay, that's a good start.
9:15
Let's separate this from our next
section with our horizontal rule.
9:17
Which is just a line used to
separate sections of a document.
9:21
First I will create a few returns in
here so we can see what we're doing,
9:25
and one, two, three, Horizontal Rule.
9:31
Now you create the Horizontal Rule
with either underscores, hyphens,
9:39
or the asterisk.
9:43
I prefer hyphens because
that leaves the asterisk for
9:45
bolding, italicizing, and making lists,
which we'll see in the next video.
9:48
Also hyphens look like lines,
9:53
so they're easy to remember
when making a Horizontal Rule.
9:55
I'll type all three examples here just so
that you can see them in action.
9:58
So we've got the ___, the ---,
10:03
and the ***,
10:07
and you can see it's just three
of those in all three cases.
10:10
If we scroll down you can
see three Horizontal Rules.
10:16
All right, that's a wrap on this section.
10:21
Save this, and
I will see you in the next video.
10:24