Understanding Markdown

You can read below for the most useful aspects of Markdown as it relates to formatting posts in the Rick Steves Travel Forum. Or, try this link for a thorough detailing of Markdown syntax.

Bulleted lists: use asterisks, pluses, and hyphens (*, +, and -) as list markers. For example, you would write...

* Candy.
* Gum.
* Booze.
OR
- Candy.
- Gum.
- Booze.

This would appear in your published post...

• Candy.
• Gum.
• Booze.OR

OR

• Candy.
• Gum.
• Booze.

Links: use parentheses around URLs immediately after the link text. Link text should be enclosed within brackets. For example...

This is an [example link](http://example.com/).

This would appear in your published post...

This is an example link.

Italics and Bold: use asterisks and underscores to indicate spans of emphasis. Use one asterisk (or underscore) for italics and two asterisks (or two underscores) for bold. For example...

Some of these words *are emphasized*.
Some of these words _are emphasized also_.
Use two asterisks for **strong emphasis**.
Or, if you prefer, __use two underscores instead__.

This would appear in your published post...

Some of these words are emphasized.
Some of these words are emphasized also.
Use two asterisks for strong emphasis.
Or, if you prefer, use two underscores instead.

Blockquotes: use '>' angle brackets at the beginning of each line to be indented. For example, you would write...

> This is a blockquote.
> 
> This is the second paragraph in the blockquote.

This would appear in your published post...

This is a blockquote.

This is the second paragraph in the blockquote.

Having Trouble Writing Certain Characters? Because certain characters such as the asterisk have special meaning in Markdown's formatting syntax, writing these characters into your published post takes an extra step. Markdown allows you to use backslash escapes to generate these literal characters. In other words, you must type a backslash character before typing certain literal characters (listed below). For example, if you wanted to surround a word with literal asterisks, you can use backslashes before the asterisks, like this...

\*literal asterisks\*

This would appear in your published post...

*literal asterisks*

Markdown provides backslash escapes for the characters below. Again, this means you need to type a backslash before using each of these characters to make them appear in your post.

\ backslash
` backtick
* asterisk
_ underscore
{} curly braces
[] square brackets
() parentheses
# hash mark
+ plus sign
- minus sign (hyphen)