Cheat Sheet - CommonMark Style Markdown

Wednesday, December 6, 2023

CommonMark is a standardized version of Markdown designed to solve inconsistencies in how Markdown is parsed. This cheat sheet provides a quick reference to the most commonly used features of CommonMark style Markdown.

Headings

• Level 1 Heading: # Heading 1
• Level 2 Heading: ## Heading 2
• Level 3 Heading: ### Heading 3

Text Emphasis

• Bold: **bold** or __bold__
• Italic: *italic* or _italic_
• Bold and Italic: ***bold & italic*** or ___bold & italic___

Lists

• Unordered list: Start lines with -, +, or *

• Ordered list: Start lines with numbers followed by .

  1. First item
  2. Second item
  

Links and Images

• Link: [Link text](URL)
• Image: ![Alt text](Image URL)

Code

• Inline code: Enclose text with backticks `

• Code block: Enclose text with three backticks (```) or indent with four spaces

  ```markdown code block ```

Blockquotes

• Start a line with > followed by a space

  > This is a blockquote.
  

Tables

• Use pipes | to create columns and hyphens - to create headers

| Header 1 | Header 2 |
| -------- | -------- |
| Row 1    | Data 1   |
| Row 2    | Data 2   |

Horizontal Rules

• Use three or more hyphens ---, asterisks ***, or underscores ___

Special Characters

• Escape special Markdown characters with a backslash \

CommonMark's standardized approach ensures that Markdown documents are consistent and portable across different platforms and parsers.