Markdown Syntax Guide: Headings, Lists, Links, and More

By M. Hassan Ali Published January 12, 2025 2 min read

Bookmark this one — it's meant to be a quick reference, not a read-once tutorial.

Headings

# Heading 1
## Heading 2
### Heading 3

One hash for the biggest heading, up to six for the smallest. Leave a space after the hash marks.

Bold and italic

**bold text**
*italic text*
***bold and italic***

Lists

- Unordered item
- Another item

1. Ordered item
2. Another item

You can use -, *, or + for unordered lists interchangeably — just stay consistent within one list.

Links and images

[Visit example](https://example.com)
![Alt text for an image](image.jpg)

An image is just a link with an exclamation mark in front. The text in brackets becomes the alt text.

Blockquotes

> This is a quoted passage.

Code

Inline code uses `backticks`.

```
A fenced block
spans multiple lines
```

Tables

| Name  | Role     |
|-------|----------|
| Ana   | Designer |
| Sam   | Developer|

The dashes in the second row set the column widths visually in the source, but don't need to line up exactly — the renderer figures out the columns from the pipe characters.

Horizontal rule

---

Three or more dashes, asterisks, or underscores on their own line draw a horizontal divider line.

Seeing it rendered as you go

Reading syntax rules is one thing; seeing your actual file rendered is another. Paste anything from this guide into the Markdown to HTML converter to check it renders the way you expect before you use it somewhere else.

Frequently asked questions

Does Markdown support underlined text?
Not in standard Markdown — there's no dedicated underline syntax, mainly because underlining is visually easy to confuse with a link. Bold or italic are the standard emphasis options.
Can I mix HTML into a Markdown file?
Many Markdown processors allow it, but the tools on this site run in safe mode, which strips raw HTML tags for security — stick to Markdown syntax for anything you plan to convert here.

How this guide was prepared: This covers standard (CommonMark-style) syntax, which is what the tools on this site parse. Some platforms add extras like task-list checkboxes or footnotes on top of this base.

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