---
# System prepended metadata

title: Introduction to Markdown

---

# Introduction to Markdown

Marcelo Nollmann
*version mar18/21*

---

How are document pages written in this github? Word? OpenOffice? Google Docs? **You guessed: none of the above.**

Labbooks are written in Markdown, a very *easy to use* programming language that allows you to concentrate on writing. Here are some examples of what you can do with it:

## Getting Markdown

There are many applications that support Markdown. I use [Typora](https://www.typora.io/#linux), or [Haroopad](http://pad.haroopress.com/) or [Atom](https://atom.io/) for **offline** editing (my favorite).

But you can also use on-line editors such as (Dillinger)[https://dillinger.io/] or [StackEdit](https://stackedit.io/app#) or (HackMD)[https://hackmd.io/].

I recently installed [codiMD](http://192.168.6.30:3000/) in one of our servers. It is *supposed* to be great for document collaboration.

Do your shopping and stick to what you like the best.

## Writing text in markdown

### Headers

To write headers of sections you just use '#'. For instance:


```markdown
# header 1

## header 2

### header 3

... you get the idea
```

#### Emphasis

This is even easier. For example

```markdown
**bold**
*italic*
9^th
```
will appear as

**bold**
*italic*

#### Lists

List are done by just using '-' For instance, the following

``` markdown
- item 1
- item 2
- item 3
	- item 3.1
	- item 3.2
	- item 3.3
```
will appear as

- item 1
- item 2
- item 3
	- item 3.1
	- item 3.2
	- item 3.3

An ordered list

```markdown
1. item 1
2. item 2
3. item 3
44. item 4
4. etc
```

 will look like:

1. item 1
2. item 2
3. item 3
4. item 4
5. etc

#### Images

![](https://i.imgur.com/h7P1MWD.jpg)

Let's say you have an image, called pinguin.jpeg in your directory ```2019_09_03_Create_Labbook```

You can insert the image by typing

```markdown
![pinguin](./pinguin.jpeg)
```

and it will appear as:

![pinguin](./pinguin.jpeg)

You can also add images from the internet by replacing the filename with a link.

Make sure you always use relative links! If you don't know what these are, ask around!

#### Tables


Tables are easy, for instance, do

```markdown
| strains | Date | Procedence|
| --------|------|----------|
|sdsdnk| 20-09-76| Cozzlab|
| pyt233| 19-01-81| SherrattLab|
```

will appear as:

| strains | Date | Procedence|
| --------|------|----------|
|sdsdnk| 20-09-76| Cozzlab|
| pyt233| 19-01-81| SherrattLab|

and so on.


### Conversion

Markdown documents can be easily converted to word, html, latex, pdf using [pandoc](https://pandoc.org/MANUAL.html).
****