Formatting Your Posts with "Markdown"

Linebreaks

End a line with two spaces to add a <br/> linebreak:

Dont get behind...  
The 8 ball.

Italics and Bold

*This is italicized*, and so is _this_.

**This is bold**, and so is __this__.

Use ***italics and bold together*** if you ___must___.

Links

Basic Links

There are three ways to write links:

Here's an inline link to [Google](http://www.google.com).

Here's a reference-style link to [Google][1].

Here's a more readable link to [Yahoo!][yahoo].

[1]: http://www.google.com
[yahoo]: http://www.yahoo.com

The link definitions can appear anywhere in the post; before or after the place where you use them (but we prefer them to be at the end for consistency). The link definition names [1] and [yahoo] can be any unique string, and are case-insensitive; [yahoo] is the same as [YAHOO].

Advanced Links

Links can have a title attribute, which will show up when someone hovers over the link. Title attributes can also be added; they are helpful if the link itself is not descriptive enough to tell users where they're going.

Here's a <span class="hi">[poorly-named link](http://www.google.com/ "Google")</span>.

Never write "[click here][^2]".

Visit [us][web].

[^2]: http://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/noClickHere (Advice against the phrase "click here")
[web]: http://www.billiardsforum.com "The Billiards Forum"

You can also use standard HTML hyperlink syntax.

<a href="http://example.com" title="example">example</a>

Bare URLs

Markdown supports "naked" URLs (in most but not all cases; Beware of unusual characters in your URLs); they will be converted to links automatically:

I often visit http://www.billiardsforum.com.

Force URLs by enclosing them in angle brackets:

Have you seen <http://example.com>?

URLs can be relative or full.

Headers

Underline text to make the two <h1> <h2> top-level headers:

Header 1
========
Header 2
--------

The above only works for level 1 and level 2 headers.

The number of = or - signs doesn't matter; one will work. But using enough to underline the text makes your titles look better in plain text.

-OR-

Use hash marks for several levels of headers:

# Header 1 #
## Header 2 ##
### Header 3 ###

The closing # characters are optional.

Horizontal Rules

Insert a horizontal rule <hr/> by putting three or more hyphens, asterisks, or underscores on a line by themselves:

---

Rule #1
---
Rule #2
*******
Rule #3
___

Using spaces between the characters also works:

Rule #4   
- - - -

Lists

Simple lists

A bulleted <ul> list:

- Use a minus sign for a bullet
+ Or plus sign
* Or an asterisk

A numbered <ol> list:

1. Numbered lists are easy
2. Markdown keeps track of the numbers for you
7. So this will be item 3.

A double-spaced list:

- This list gets wrapped in <p> tags
 
- So there will be extra space between items

Advanced lists: Nesting

To put other Markdown blocks in a list; just indent four spaces for each nesting level:

1. Lists in a list item:
    - Indented four spaces.
        * indented eight spaces.
    - Four spaces again.

Here is an advanced example of list nesting:

1. Lists in a list item:
    - Indented four spaces.
        * indented eight spaces.
    - Four spaces again.
2.  Multiple paragraphs in a list items:
    It's best to indent the paragraphs four spaces
    You can get away with three, but it can get
    confusing when you nest other things.
    Stick to four.
 
    We indented the first line an extra space to align
    it with these paragraphs. In real use, we might do
    that to the entire list so that all items line up.
 
    This paragraph is still part of the list item, but it looks messy to humans. So it's a good idea to wrap your nested paragraphs manually, as we did with the first two.
 
3. Blockquotes in a list item:
 
    > Skip a line and
    > indent the >'s four spaces.
 
4. Preformatted text in a list item:
 
        Skip a line and indent eight spaces.
        That's four spaces for the list
        and four to trigger the code block.

Blockquotes

Simple blockquotes

Add a > to the beginning of any line to create a blockquote.

> The syntax is based on the way email programs
> usually do quotations. You don't need to hard-wrap
> the paragraphs in your blockquotes, but it looks much nicer if you do. It depends how lazy you feel.

Advanced blockquotes: Nesting

To put other Markdown blocks in a blockquote, just add a > followed by a space to the beginning of each line that should go in the blockquote

To put other Markdown blocks in a blockquote, just add a > followed by a space:

> The > on the blank lines is optional.
> Include it or don't; Markdown doesn't care.
> 
> But your plain text looks better to
> humans if you include the extra `>`
> between paragraphs.

Blockquotes within a blockquote:

> A standard blockquote is indented
> > A nested blockquote is indented more
> > > > You can nest to any depth.

Lists in a blockquote:

> - A list in a blockquote
> - With a > and space in front of it
>    * A sublist

Preformatted text in a blockquote:

>     Indent five spaces total.  The first
>     one is part of the blockquote designator.

Images

Images are exactly like links, but they have an exclamation point in front of them:

![Valid XHTML](http://w3.org/Icons/valid-xhtml10).

The word in square brackets is the alt text, which gets displayed if the browser can't show the image. Be sure to include meaningful alt text for screen-reading software.

Just like links, images work with reference syntax and titles:

This page is ![valid XHTML][checkmark].

[checkmark]: http://w3.org/Icons/valid-xhtml10
"What are you smiling at?"

Note: Markdown does not currently support the shortest reference syntax for images:

Here's a broken ![checkmark].

But you can use a slightly more verbose version of implicit reference names:

This ![checkmark][] works.

The reference name is also used as the alt text.

You can also use standard HTML image syntax, which allows you to scale the width and height of the image.

<img src="http://example.com/sample.png" width="100" height="100">

URLs can be relative or full.

Preformatted Text

Indent four spaces to create an block of preformatted text displayed in a monospaced font:

    1 set of Aramith Belgian billiard balls
    1 pack Kamui soft pool cue tips
    3 packages Tefco master spots

The first four spaces will be stripped off, but all other whitespace will be preserved.

Markdown and HTML are ignored within a code block:

    You will see *stars* here, but no italics.

Monospace Spans

Use backticks to create an inline span of preformatted text:

If your browser's location bar starts with `https://`, then the connection is encrypted.

(The backtick key is in the upper left corner of most keyboards.)

The text between the backticks will be displayed in a monospaced font, just like the preformatted blocks.

Inline HTML

If you need to do something that Markdown can't handle, use HTML. Note that the Billiards Forum only supports a very strict subset of HTML!

To reboot your computer, press <kbd>ctrl</kbd>+<kbd>alt</kbd>+<kbd>del</kbd>.

Markdown is smart enough not to mangle your span-level HTML:

<b>Markdown works *fine* in here.
</b>

Block-level HTML elements have a few restrictions:

1. They must be separated from surrounding text by blank lines.
2. The begin and end tags of the outermost block element must not be indented.
3. Markdown can't be used within a block of HTML.

<pre>
You can <em>not</em> use Markdown in here.
</pre>

Need More Detail?

Visit the official Markdown syntax reference page.