Markdown syntax and shortcuts: the cheat sheet
Made to sit in a tab while you write.
The whole syntax fits on one page. What follows is what actually gets used — in the order it tends to appear in a document.
Hierarchy
# Heading is level one, ## Subheading is level two, and so on up to six #. Use a single # only once per document: it is the name of the text, not a large font.
Emphasis
**bold**→ bold — shortcut Ctrl+B*italic*→ italic — shortcut Ctrl+I~~struck~~→struck`code`→code
Lists
- item for a plain list and 1. item for a numbered one. In numbered lists only the first number matters: writing 1. on every line works, and saves renumbering by hand when an item lands in the middle.
- [ ] task and - [x] done give you a task list with checkboxes.
Links and images
[text](https://example.com) is a link. An image is the same thing with an exclamation mark in front: .
The text in the image's brackets is the alternative text — what a screen reader says out loud and what appears if the image fails to load. It is worth writing properly.
Quotes, code and rules
> text becomes a quote. Three backticks open and close a code block, and a language name after the first three turns on highlighting. Three hyphens alone on a line draw a horizontal rule.
Tables
Columns separated by pipes, and a row of hyphens marking the header:
| Column | Other |
| --- | --- |
| value | value |The hyphens do not need to line up with anything. A colon at the end (---:) aligns the column right, and one on each side (:---:) centres it.
Line breaks
This is the detail that trips people up: a single line break does not break the line in the result — the two sentences become one paragraph. To separate paragraphs, leave a blank line between them.
Editor shortcuts
In KempDec Markdown the most-used marks have keys: Ctrl+B for bold, Ctrl+I for italic, Ctrl+K for the command palette, and / at the start of an empty line opens the insert menu. On a Mac, ⌘ instead of Ctrl.