An introduction to Markdown in the forum

[Klaus]

One of the things that power users of this forum should know is its support for Markdown. You don't need to use it, but if you use the forum often, it can be a real time saver.

The idea is that certain conventions of writing text are automatically converted into an appropriate rendering.

For instance, if I write *this*, then it gets converted to this.
if I write **this**, then it gets converted to this.

A header can be written like this:

My heading
----------

which is rendered as:

My heading

There are different types of headings.

This is a bigger heading

You can make checkboxes:

I like this

I don't like it.

Or just lists:

• first item
• second item

Or enumerations:

1. First item
2. Second item

This is what I typed to get these things:

You can make checkboxes:
 
[x] I like this
[ ] I don't like it.
 
Or just lists:
* first item
* second item
 
Or enumerations:
 
1.  First item
2. Second item
 

You can quote something by writing a >in front.

This text is quoted.

If you dare to, you can even make beautiful maths like this: $\biggl(\int_{-\infty}^\infty e^{-x^2}d x\biggr)^2 = \int_{-\infty}^\infty\int_{-\infty}^\infty e^{-(x^2+y^2)} dx dy$, but that's not strictly a part of Markdown, so don't worry about it.

You can mention somebody by writing his screen name prefixed with the @ symbol. For instance, here I mention @George-K , which then gets turned into a link to George's profile and he gets a message that somebody mentioned him.

For links, this syntax: [my link](www.google.com) gets turned into my link.

If you want to disable Markdown and anything else within a piece of text, you can surround it with `. When I type `[my link](www.google.com)` it gets turned into [my link](www.google.com) and not my link.

A similar effect can be achieved by adding four spaces at the beginning of a line.

This line begins with four spaces. This is a code block, so _this_ is not rendered in italics.

[Klaus]

Some of the more advanced things: You can make tables. If you write this::

| Country      | Corona Cases |
| ------------ | ------------ |
| USA          | 7            |
| Germany      | 3            |

it gets rendered as:

Country	Corona Cases
USA	7
Germany	3

[89th]

[89th]

Kidding. Good stuff!

[Mik]

I approve of these shenanigans.