Learn markdown in 3 minutes

Markdown syntax is extremely simple and you can learn all you need to know within a few minutes.

Also refer to this excellent cheatsheet.

Formatting headings

# First level
## Second Level
### Third level
#### Fourth level
##### Fifth level
###### Sixth level

Bold and Italics

Bold: **some text**

Italics:  _some other text_

Also italics: *this is also italics*

Links

[link text](link)
example: [click here for a web page](http://google.com)

Figures and Images

Figures are formatted the same as links but just add a ! before the square bracked.

![text description](/path/to/image)

You can have a picture with a link:

[![text description](/path/to/image)](http://twitter.com)

Horizontal lines

***

or 

---

Code and verbatim

Inline code: `some code`

Code block:

    some code
    and another line of code
    some more code

Subscript (Pandoc only)

R~0~

Superscript (Pandoc only)

x^2^

That's most of the formatting you'll need to get by. I'll get into citation and table formatting on a separate page.