# HOWTO: Improve your use of Markdown in Discourse

**Category:** [Site Feedback](https://discourse.openehr.org/c/site-feedback/2)
**Created:** 2025-04-03 14:59 UTC
**Views:** 72
**Replies:** 0
**URL:** https://discourse.openehr.org/t/howto-improve-your-use-of-markdown-in-discourse/6632

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## Post #1 by @marcusbaw

### Introduction

Markdown is a way to apply HTML (web language) formatting to plain text in a quick and mostly intuitive way. It looks a bit like formatting used to look in plain text emails, for those who remember that!

The first thing to know about using Markdown in Discourse is that **you don't have to use Markdown to use Discourse**! You can get by perfectly well by using the toolbar in the Composer in Discourse, or by reply-by-email.

What Markdown adds is the ability to quickly format your posts using plain text - yet in the Markdown preview **bold**, *italic*, `preformatted text`,  ~~strikethrough~~, and semantic headings. You can add links, images, tables and emoji as well using Markdown.

### Markdown Basics

To get you started, here are the first few steps in Markdown that you might like to learn:

> #### Bold text
> To embolden some text, simply wrap it in double asterisks like this - `**bold**` which will render as **bold**.
> 
> #### Italic text
> Using just one set of wrapping asterisks will result in italic text - `*italic*` which will render as *italic*.
> 
> #### Headings
> Starting a line with `#` then a space, then some text, will give you a heading - the text is larger and emboldened too.
> 
> `# H1 is the largest heading size`, which will render as
> # H1 is the largest heading size.
> 
> #### Emoji
> If you type a colon `:` and then start typing the name of the emoji you want, eg `:smile_cat:` this will bring up a mini-menu of emoji options, from which you can choose. Discourse autocompletes the ending colon for you and it renders like :smile_cat:.

Once you have got the hang of these initial Markdown features, you can consult the Markdown guide below to learn more.

### Guides

There is a guide on the full Markdown specification here. Most of the CommonMark Markdown specification is implemented in Discourse:
https://www.markdownguide.org/

There is a more detailed article on Markdown on the website of its creator, John Gruber:
https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/

And for serious Markdown geeks, you can read all about the origins and development of Markdown on Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown

### Markdown hacks
Some things can be difficult to do in Markdown, such as <ins>underlined text</ins>, and
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;arbitrary tab indentation, so here is a link to some [hacks](https://www.markdownguide.org/hacks/) which can help you achieve these.

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**Canonical:** https://discourse.openehr.org/t/howto-improve-your-use-of-markdown-in-discourse/6632
**Original content:** https://discourse.openehr.org/t/howto-improve-your-use-of-markdown-in-discourse/6632