Pandoc understands an extended and slightly revised version of John
Gruber’s
markdown
syntax. This document explains the syntax, noting differences from
standard markdown. Except where noted, these differences can be
suppressed by using the markdown_strict
format
instead of markdown
. An extensions can be enabled
by adding +EXTENSION
to the format name and
disabled by adding -EXTENSION
. For example,
markdown_strict+footnotes
is strict markdown with
footnotes enabled, while
markdown-footnotes-pipe_tables
is pandoc’s
markdown without footnotes or pipe tables.
Markdown is designed to be easy to write, and, even more importantly, easy to read:
A Markdown-formatted document should be publishable as-is, as plain text, without looking like it’s been marked up with tags or formatting instructions. – John Gruber
This principle has guided pandoc’s decisions in finding syntax for tables, footnotes, and other extensions.
There is, however, one respect in which pandoc’s aims are different from the original aims of markdown. Whereas markdown was originally designed with HTML generation in mind, pandoc is designed for multiple output formats. Thus, while pandoc allows the embedding of raw HTML, it discourages it, and provides other, non-HTMLish ways of representing important document elements like definition lists, tables, mathematics, and footnotes.
A paragraph is one or more lines of text followed by one or more blank line. Newlines are treated as spaces, so you can reflow your paragraphs as you like. If you need a hard line break, put two or more spaces at the end of a line.
There are two kinds of headers, Setext and atx.
A setext-style header is a line of text
“underlined” with a row of =
signs (for a level one header) or -
signs
(for a level two header):
A level-one header ================== A level-two header ------------------
The header text can contain inline formatting, such as emphasis (see Inline formatting, below).
An Atx-style header consists of one to six #
signs and a line of text, optionally followed by any number of
#
signs. The number of #
signs at the beginning of the line is the header level:
## A level-two header ### A level-three header ###
As with setext-style headers, the header text can contain formatting:
# A level-one header with a [link](/url) and *emphasis*
Standard markdown syntax does not require a blank line before
a header. Pandoc does require this (except, of course, at the
beginning of the document). The reason for the requirement is
that it is all too easy for a #
to end up
at the beginning of a line by accident (perhaps through line
wrapping). Consider, for example:
I like several of their flavors of ice cream: #22, for example, and #5.
Headers can be assigned attributes using this syntax at the end of the line containing the header text:
{#identifier .class .class key=value key=value}
Thus, for example, the following headers will all be assigned
the identifier foo
:
# My header {#foo} ## My header ## {#foo} My other header {#foo} ---------------
(This syntax is compatible with PHP Markdown Extra.)
Note that although this syntax allows assignment of classes and key/value attributes, writers generally don’t use all of this information. Identifiers, classes, and key/value attributes are used in HTML and HTML-based formats such as EPUB and slidy. Identifiers are used for labels and link anchors in the LaTeX, ConTeXt, Textile, and AsciiDoc writers.
Headers with the class unnumbered
will not
be numbered, even if --number-sections
is
specified. A single hyphen (-
) in an
attribute context is equivalent to
.unnumbered
, and preferable in non-English
documents. So,
# My header {-}
is just the same as
# My header {.unnumbered}
A header without an explicitly specified identifier will be automatically assigned a unique identifier based on the header text. To derive the identifier from the header text,
Remove all formatting, links, etc.
Remove all footnotes.
Remove all punctuation, except underscores, hyphens, and periods.
Replace all spaces and newlines with hyphens.
Convert all alphabetic characters to lowercase.
Remove everything up to the first letter (identifiers may not begin with a number or punctuation mark).
If nothing is left after this, use the identifier
section
.
Thus, for example,
Header | Identifier |
---|---|
Header identifiers in HTML |
header-identifiers-in-html
|
Dogs?–in my house? |
dogs--in-my-house
|
HTML, S5, or RTF? |
html-s5-or-rtf
|
3. Applications |
applications
|
33 |
section
|
These rules should, in most cases, allow one to determine the
identifier from the header text. The exception is when several
headers have the same text; in this case, the first will get
an identifier as described above; the second will get the same
identifier with -1
appended; the third with
-2
; and so on.
These identifiers are used to provide link targets in the
table of contents generated by the
--toc|--table-of-contents
option. They also
make it easy to provide links from one section of a document
to another. A link to this section, for example, might look
like this:
See the section on [header identifiers](#header-identifiers-in-html-latex-and-context).
Note, however, that this method of providing links to sections works only in HTML, LaTeX, and ConTeXt formats.
If the --section-divs
option is specified,
then each section will be wrapped in a div
(or a section
, if
--html5
was specified), and the identifier
will be attached to the enclosing
<div>
(or
<section>
) tag rather than the header
itself. This allows entire sections to be manipulated using
javascript or treated differently in CSS.
Pandoc behaves as if reference links have been defined for each header. So, instead of
[header identifiers](#header-identifiers-in-html)
you can simply write
[header identifiers]
or
[header identifiers][]
or
[the section on header identifiers][header identifiers]
If there are multiple headers with identical text, the corresponding reference will link to the first one only, and you will need to use explicit links to link to the others, as described above.
Unlike regular reference links, these references are case-sensitive.
Note: if you have defined an explicit identifier for a header, then implicit references to it will not work.
Markdown uses email conventions for quoting blocks of text. A
block quotation is one or more paragraphs or other block elements
(such as lists or headers), with each line preceded by a
>
character and a space. (The
>
need not start at the left margin, but it
should not be indented more than three spaces.)
> This is a block quote. This > paragraph has two lines. > > 1. This is a list inside a block quote. > 2. Second item.
A “lazy” form, which requires the
>
character only on the first line of each
block, is also allowed:
> This is a block quote. This paragraph has two lines. > 1. This is a list inside a block quote. 2. Second item.
Among the block elements that can be contained in a block quote are other block quotes. That is, block quotes can be nested:
> This is a block quote. > > > A block quote within a block quote.
Standard markdown syntax does not require a blank line before a
block quote. Pandoc does require this (except, of course, at the
beginning of the document). The reason for the requirement is
that it is all too easy for a >
to end up
at the beginning of a line by accident (perhaps through line
wrapping). So, unless the markdown_strict
format is used, the following does not produce a nested block
quote in pandoc:
> This is a block quote. >> Nested.
A block of text indented four spaces (or one tab) is treated as verbatim text: that is, special characters do not trigger special formatting, and all spaces and line breaks are preserved. For example,
if (a > 3) { moveShip(5 * gravity, DOWN); }
The initial (four space or one tab) indentation is not considered part of the verbatim text, and is removed in the output.
Note: blank lines in the verbatim text need not begin with four spaces.
In addition to standard indented code blocks, Pandoc supports
fenced code blocks. These begin with a
row of three or more tildes (~
) or
backticks (`
) and end with a row of tildes
or backticks that must be at least as long as the starting
row. Everything between these lines is treated as code. No
indentation is necessary:
~~~~~~~ if (a > 3) { moveShip(5 * gravity, DOWN); } ~~~~~~~
Like regular code blocks, fenced code blocks must be separated from surrounding text by blank lines.
If the code itself contains a row of tildes or backticks, just use a longer row of tildes or backticks at the start and end:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~ code including tildes ~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Optionally, you may attach attributes to the code block using this syntax:
~~~~ {#mycode .haskell .numberLines startFrom="100"} qsort [] = [] qsort (x:xs) = qsort (filter (< x) xs) ++ [x] ++ qsort (filter (>= x) xs) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Here mycode
is an identifier,
haskell
and numberLines
are classes, and startFrom
is an attribute
with value 100
. Some output formats can use
this information to do syntax highlighting. Currently, the
only output formats that uses this information are HTML and
LaTeX. If highlighting is supported for your output format and
language, then the code block above will appear highlighted,
with numbered lines. (To see which languages are supported, do
pandoc --version
.) Otherwise, the code
block above will appear as follows:
<pre id="mycode" class="haskell numberLines" startFrom="100"> <code> ... </code> </pre>
A shortcut form can also be used for specifying the language of the code block:
```haskell qsort [] = [] ```
This is equivalent to:
``` {.haskell} qsort [] = [] ```
If the fenced_code_attributes
extension is
disabled, but input contains class attribute(s) for the
codeblock, the first class attribute will be printed after the
opening fence as a bare word.
To prevent all highlighting, use the
--no-highlight
flag. To set the
highlighting style, use --highlight-style
.
A line block is a sequence of lines beginning with a vertical
bar (|
) followed by a space. The division
into lines will be preserved in the output, as will any leading
spaces; otherwise, the lines will be formatted as markdown. This
is useful for verse and addresses:
| The limerick packs laughs anatomical | In space that is quite economical. | But the good ones I've seen | So seldom are clean | And the clean ones so seldom are comical | 200 Main St. | Berkeley, CA 94718
The lines can be hard-wrapped if needed, but the continuation line must begin with a space.
| The Right Honorable Most Venerable and Righteous Samuel L. Constable, Jr. | 200 Main St. | Berkeley, CA 94718
This syntax is borrowed from reStructuredText.
A bullet list is a list of bulleted list items. A bulleted list
item begins with a bullet (*
,
+
, or -
). Here is a simple
example:
* one * two * three
This will produce a “compact” list. If you want a “loose” list, in which each item is formatted as a paragraph, put spaces between the items:
* one * two * three
The bullets need not be flush with the left margin; they may be indented one, two, or three spaces. The bullet must be followed by whitespace.
List items look best if subsequent lines are flush with the first line (after the bullet):
* here is my first list item. * and my second.
But markdown also allows a “lazy” format:
* here is my first list item. * and my second.
A list item may contain multiple paragraphs and other block-level content. However, subsequent paragraphs must be preceded by a blank line and indented four spaces or a tab. The list will look better if the first paragraph is aligned with the rest:
* First paragraph. Continued. * Second paragraph. With a code block, which must be indented eight spaces: { code }
List items may include other lists. In this case the preceding blank line is optional. The nested list must be indented four spaces or one tab:
* fruits + apples - macintosh - red delicious + pears + peaches * vegetables + broccoli + chard
As noted above, markdown allows you to write list items “lazily,” instead of indenting continuation lines. However, if there are multiple paragraphs or other blocks in a list item, the first line of each must be indented.
+ A lazy, lazy, list item. + Another one; this looks bad but is legal. Second paragraph of second list item.
Note: Although the four-space
rule for continuation paragraphs comes from the official
markdown
syntax guide, the reference implementation,
Markdown.pl
, does not follow it. So pandoc
will give different results than Markdown.pl
when authors have indented continuation paragraphs fewer than
four spaces.
The markdown syntax guide is not explicit whether the four-space rule applies to all block-level content in a list item; it only mentions paragraphs and code blocks. But it implies that the rule applies to all block-level content (including nested lists), and pandoc interprets it that way.
Ordered lists work just like bulleted lists, except that the items begin with enumerators rather than bullets.
In standard markdown, enumerators are decimal numbers followed by a period and a space. The numbers themselves are ignored, so there is no difference between this list:
1. one 2. two 3. three
and this one:
5. one 7. two 1. three
Unlike standard markdown, Pandoc allows ordered list items to be marked with uppercase and lowercase letters and roman numerals, in addition to arabic numerals. List markers may be enclosed in parentheses or followed by a single right-parentheses or period. They must be separated from the text that follows by at least one space, and, if the list marker is a capital letter with a period, by at least two spaces.[1]
The fancy_lists
extension also allows
“#
” to be used as an ordered
list marker in place of a numeral:
#. one #. two
Pandoc also pays attention to the type of list marker used, and to the starting number, and both of these are preserved where possible in the output format. Thus, the following yields a list with numbers followed by a single parenthesis, starting with 9, and a sublist with lowercase roman numerals:
9) Ninth 10) Tenth 11) Eleventh i. subone ii. subtwo iii. subthree
Pandoc will start a new list each time a different type of list marker is used. So, the following will create three lists:
(2) Two (5) Three 1. Four * Five
If default list markers are desired, use
#.
:
#. one #. two #. three
Pandoc supports definition lists, using the syntax of PHP Markdown Extra with some extensions.[2]
Term 1 : Definition 1 Term 2 with *inline markup* : Definition 2 { some code, part of Definition 2 } Third paragraph of definition 2.
Each term must fit on one line, which may optionally be followed by a blank line, and must be followed by one or more definitions. A definition begins with a colon or tilde, which may be indented one or two spaces.
A term may have multiple definitions, and each definition may consist of one or more block elements (paragraph, code block, list, etc.), each indented four spaces or one tab stop. The body of the definition (including the first line, aside from the colon or tilde) should be indented four spaces. However, as with other markdown lists, you can “lazily” omit indentation except at the beginning of a paragraph or other block element:
Term 1 : Definition with lazy continuation. Second paragraph of the definition.
If you leave space before the definition (as in the example above), the text of the definition will be treated as a paragraph. In some output formats, this will mean greater spacing between term/definition pairs. For a more compact definition list, omit the space before the definition:
Term 1 ~ Definition 1 Term 2 ~ Definition 2a ~ Definition 2b
Note that space between items in a definition list is
required. (A variant that loosens this requirement, but
disallows “lazy” hard wrapping, can be activated
with compact_definition_lists
: see
Non-pandoc
extensions, below.)
The special list marker @
can be used for
sequentially numbered examples. The first list item with a
@
marker will be numbered “1”,
the next “2”, and so on, throughout the document.
The numbered examples need not occur in a single list; each
new list using @
will take up where the
last stopped. So, for example:
(@) My first example will be numbered (1). (@) My second example will be numbered (2). Explanation of examples. (@) My third example will be numbered (3).
Numbered examples can be labeled and referred to elsewhere in the document:
(@good) This is a good example. As (@good) illustrates, ...
The label can be any string of alphanumeric characters, underscores, or hyphens.
Pandoc behaves differently from Markdown.pl
on some “edge cases” involving lists. Consider this
source:
+ First + Second: - Fee - Fie - Foe + Third
Pandoc transforms this into a “compact list” (with
no <p>
tags around
“First”, “Second”, or
“Third”), while markdown puts
<p>
tags around “Second”
and “Third” (but not “First”), because
of the blank space around “Third”. Pandoc follows a
simple rule: if the text is followed by a blank line, it is
treated as a paragraph. Since “Second” is followed
by a list, and not a blank line, it isn’t treated as a
paragraph. The fact that the list is followed by a blank line is
irrelevant. (Note: Pandoc works this way even when the
markdown_strict
format is specified. This
behavior is consistent with the official markdown syntax
description, even though it is different from that of
Markdown.pl
.)
What if you want to put an indented code block after a list?
- item one - item two { my code block }
Trouble! Here pandoc (like other markdown implementations) will
treat { my code block }
as the second
paragraph of item two, and not as a code block.
To “cut off” the list after item two, you can insert some non-indented content, like an HTML comment, which won’t produce visible output in any format:
- item one - item two <!-- end of list --> { my code block }
You can use the same trick if you want two consecutive lists instead of one big list:
1. one 2. two 3. three <!-- --> 1. uno 2. dos 3. tres
A line containing a row of three or more *
,
-
, or _
characters
(optionally separated by spaces) produces a horizontal rule:
* * * * ---------------
Four kinds of tables may be used. The first three kinds presuppose the use of a fixed-width font, such as Courier. The fourth kind can be used with proportionally spaced fonts, as it does not require lining up columns.
A caption may optionally be provided with all 4 kinds of tables
(as illustrated in the examples below). A caption is a paragraph
beginning with the string Table:
(or just
:
), which will be stripped off. It may appear
either before or after the table.
Simple tables look like this:
Right Left Center Default ------- ------ ---------- ------- 12 12 12 12 123 123 123 123 1 1 1 1 Table: Demonstration of simple table syntax.
The headers and table rows must each fit on one line. Column alignments are determined by the position of the header text relative to the dashed line below it:[3]
If the dashed line is flush with the header text on the right side but extends beyond it on the left, the column is right-aligned.
If the dashed line is flush with the header text on the left side but extends beyond it on the right, the column is left-aligned.
If the dashed line extends beyond the header text on both sides, the column is centered.
If the dashed line is flush with the header text on both sides, the default alignment is used (in most cases, this will be left).
The table must end with a blank line, or a line of dashes followed by a blank line.
The column headers may be omitted, provided a dashed line is used to end the table. For example:
------- ------ ---------- ------- 12 12 12 12 123 123 123 123 1 1 1 1 ------- ------ ---------- -------
When headers are omitted, column alignments are determined on the basis of the first line of the table body. So, in the tables above, the columns would be right, left, center, and right aligned, respectively.
Multiline tables allow headers and table rows to span multiple lines of text (but cells that span multiple columns or rows of the table are not supported). Here is an example:
------------------------------------------------------------- Centered Default Right Left Header Aligned Aligned Aligned ----------- ------- --------------- ------------------------- First row 12.0 Example of a row that spans multiple lines. Second row 5.0 Here's another one. Note the blank line between rows. ------------------------------------------------------------- Table: Here's the caption. It, too, may span multiple lines.
These work like simple tables, but with the following differences:
They must begin with a row of dashes, before the header text (unless the headers are omitted).
They must end with a row of dashes, then a blank line.
The rows must be separated by blank lines.
In multiline tables, the table parser pays attention to the widths of the columns, and the writers try to reproduce these relative widths in the output. So, if you find that one of the columns is too narrow in the output, try widening it in the markdown source.
Headers may be omitted in multiline tables as well as simple tables:
----------- ------- --------------- ------------------------- First row 12.0 Example of a row that spans multiple lines. Second row 5.0 Here's another one. Note the blank line between rows. ----------- ------- --------------- ------------------------- : Here's a multiline table without headers.
It is possible for a multiline table to have just one row, but the row should be followed by a blank line (and then the row of dashes that ends the table), or the table may be interpreted as a simple table.
Grid tables look like this:
: Sample grid table. +---------------+---------------+--------------------+ | Fruit | Price | Advantages | +===============+===============+====================+ | Bananas | $1.34 | - built-in wrapper | | | | - bright color | +---------------+---------------+--------------------+ | Oranges | $2.10 | - cures scurvy | | | | - tasty | +---------------+---------------+--------------------+
The row of =
s separates the header from the
table body, and can be omitted for a headerless table. The cells
of grid tables may contain arbitrary block elements (multiple
paragraphs, code blocks, lists, etc.). Alignments are not
supported, nor are cells that span multiple columns or rows.
Grid tables can be created easily using
Emacs table
mode.
Pipe tables look like this:
| Right | Left | Default | Center | |------:|:-----|---------|:------:| | 12 | 12 | 12 | 12 | | 123 | 123 | 123 | 123 | | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | : Demonstration of pipe table syntax.
The syntax is the same as in PHP markdown extra. The beginning and ending pipe characters are optional, but pipes are required between all columns. The colons indicate column alignment as shown. The header can be omitted, but the horizontal line must still be included, as it defines column alignments.
Since the pipes indicate column boundaries, columns need not be vertically aligned, as they are in the above example. So, this is a perfectly legal (though ugly) pipe table:
fruit| price -----|-----: apple|2.05 pear|1.37 orange|3.09
The cells of pipe tables cannot contain block elements like paragraphs and lists, and cannot span multiple lines. Note also that in LaTeX/PDF output, the cells produced by pipe tables will not wrap, since there is no information available about relative widths. If you want content to wrap within cells, use multiline or grid tables.
Note: Pandoc also recognizes pipe tables of the following form, as can produced by Emacs’ orgtbl-mode:
| One | Two | |-----+-------| | my | table | | is | nice |
The difference is that +
is used instead of
|
. Other orgtbl features are not supported.
In particular, to get non-default column alignment, you’ll need
to add colons as above.
If the file begins with a title block
% title % author(s) (separated by semicolons) % date
it will be parsed as bibliographic information, not regular text. (It will be used, for example, in the title of standalone LaTeX or HTML output.) The block may contain just a title, a title and an author, or all three elements. If you want to include an author but no title, or a title and a date but no author, you need a blank line:
% % Author % My title % % June 15, 2006
The title may occupy multiple lines, but continuation lines must begin with leading space, thus:
% My title on multiple lines
If a document has multiple authors, the authors may be put on separate lines with leading space, or separated by semicolons, or both. So, all of the following are equivalent:
% Author One Author Two % Author One; Author Two % Author One; Author Two
The date must fit on one line.
All three metadata fields may contain standard inline formatting (italics, links, footnotes, etc.).
Title blocks will always be parsed, but they will affect the
output only when the --standalone
(-s
) option is chosen. In HTML output, titles
will appear twice: once in the document head – this is the title
that will appear at the top of the window in a browser – and
once at the beginning of the document body. The title in the
document head can have an optional prefix attached
(--title-prefix
or -T
option). The title in the body appears as an H1 element with
class “title”, so it can be suppressed or
reformatted with CSS. If a title prefix is specified with
-T
and no title block appears in the
document, the title prefix will be used by itself as the HTML
title.
The man page writer extracts a title, man page section number,
and other header and footer information from the title line. The
title is assumed to be the first word on the title line, which
may optionally end with a (single-digit) section number in
parentheses. (There should be no space between the title and the
parentheses.) Anything after this is assumed to be additional
footer and header text. A single pipe character
(|
) should be used to separate the footer
text from the header text. Thus,
% PANDOC(1)
will yield a man page with the title PANDOC
and section 1.
% PANDOC(1) Pandoc User Manuals
will also have “Pandoc User Manuals” in the footer.
% PANDOC(1) Pandoc User Manuals | Version 4.0
will also have “Version 4.0” in the header.
A YAML metadata block is a valid YAML object, delimited by a
line of three hyphens (---
) at the top and a
line of three hyphens (---
) or three dots
(...
) at the bottom. A YAML metadata block
may occur anywhere in the document, but if it is not at the
beginning, it must be preceded by a blank line. (Note that,
because of the way pandoc concatenates input files when several
are provided, you may also keep the metadata in a separate YAML
file and pass it to pandoc as an argument, along with your
markdown files:
pandoc chap1.md chap2.md chap3.md metadata.yaml -s -o book.html
Just be sure that the YAML file begins with
---
and ends with ---
or
...
.)
Metadata will be taken from the fields of the YAML object and added to any existing document metadata. Metadata can contain lists and objects (nested arbitrarily), but all string scalars will be interpreted as markdown. Fields with names ending in an underscore will be ignored by pandoc. (They may be given a role by external processors.)
A document may contain multiple metadata blocks. The metadata fields will be combined through a left-biased union: if two metadata blocks attempt to set the same field, the value from the first block will be taken.
When pandoc is used with -t markdown
to
create a markdown document, a YAML metadata block will be
produced only if the -s/--standalone
option
is used. All of the metadata will appear in a single block at
the beginning of the document.
Note that YAML escaping rules must be followed. Thus, for
example, if a title contains a colon, it must be quoted. The
pipe character (|
) can be used to begin an
indented block that will be interpreted literally, without need
for escaping. This form is necessary when the field contains
blank lines:
--- title: 'This is the title: it contains a colon' author: - name: Author One affiliation: University of Somewhere - name: Author Two affiliation: University of Nowhere tags: [nothing, nothingness] abstract: | This is the abstract. It consists of two paragraphs. ...
Template variables will be set automatically from the metadata.
Thus, for example, in writing HTML, the variable
abstract
will be set to the HTML equivalent
of the markdown in the abstract
field:
<p>This is the abstract.</p> <p>It consists of two paragraphs.</p>
Note: The author
variable in the default
templates expects a simple list or string. To use the structured
authors in the example, you would need a custom template. For
example:
$for(author)$ $if(author.name)$ $author.name$$if(author.affiliation)$ ($author.affiliation$)$endif$ $else$ $author$ $endif$ $endfor$
Except inside a code block or inline code, any punctuation or space character preceded by a backslash will be treated literally, even if it would normally indicate formatting. Thus, for example, if one writes
*\*hello\**
one will get
<em>*hello*</em>
instead of
<strong>hello</strong>
This rule is easier to remember than standard markdown’s rule, which allows only the following characters to be backslash-escaped:
\`*_{}[]()>#+-.!
(However, if the markdown_strict
format is
used, the standard markdown rule will be used.)
A backslash-escaped space is parsed as a nonbreaking space. It
will appear in TeX output as ~
and in HTML
and XML as \ 
or
\
.
A backslash-escaped newline (i.e. a backslash occurring at the
end of a line) is parsed as a hard line break. It will appear in
TeX output as \\
and in HTML as
<br />
. This is a nice alternative to
markdown’s “invisible” way of indicating hard line
breaks using two trailing spaces on a line.
Backslash escapes do not work in verbatim contexts.
If the --smart
option is specified, pandoc
will produce typographically correct output, converting straight
quotes to curly quotes, ---
to em-dashes,
--
to en-dashes, and ...
to ellipses. Nonbreaking spaces are inserted after certain
abbreviations, such as “Mr.”
Note: if your LaTeX template uses the
csquotes
package, pandoc will detect
automatically this and use \enquote{...}
for
quoted text.
To emphasize some text, surround it with
*
s or _
, like this:
This text is _emphasized with underscores_, and this is *emphasized with asterisks*.
Double *
or _
produces
strong emphasis:
This is **strong emphasis** and __with underscores__.
A *
or _
character
surrounded by spaces, or backslash-escaped, will not trigger
emphasis:
This is * not emphasized *, and \*neither is this\*.
Superscripts may be written by surrounding the superscripted
text by ^
characters; subscripts may be
written by surrounding the subscripted text by
~
characters. Thus, for example,
H~2~O is a liquid. 2^10^ is 1024.
If the superscripted or subscripted text contains spaces,
these spaces must be escaped with backslashes. (This is to
prevent accidental superscripting and subscripting through the
ordinary use of ~
and
^
.) Thus, if you want the letter P with
“a cat” in subscripts, use
P~a\ cat~
, not P~a cat~
.
To make a short span of text verbatim, put it inside backticks:
What is the difference between `>>=` and `>>`?
If the verbatim text includes a backtick, use double backticks:
Here is a literal backtick `` ` ``.
(The spaces after the opening backticks and before the closing backticks will be ignored.)
The general rule is that a verbatim span starts with a string of consecutive backticks (optionally followed by a space) and ends with a string of the same number of backticks (optionally preceded by a space).
Note that backslash-escapes (and other markdown constructs) do not work in verbatim contexts:
This is a backslash followed by an asterisk: `\*`.
Attributes can be attached to verbatim text, just as with fenced code blocks:
`<$>`{.haskell}
Anything between two $
characters will be
treated as TeX math. The opening $
must have
a non-space character immediately to its right, while the
closing $
must have a non-space character
immediately to its left, and must not be followed immediately by
a digit. Thus, $20,000 and $30,000
won’t
parse as math. If for some reason you need to enclose text in
literal $
characters, backslash-escape them
and they won’t be treated as math delimiters.
TeX math will be printed in all output formats. How it is rendered depends on the output format:
It will appear verbatim between $
characters.
It will be rendered using an interpreted text role
:math:
, as described
here
It will be rendered as latexmath:[...]
.
It will be rendered inside a @math
command.
It will be rendered verbatim without
$
’s.
It will be rendered inside <math>
tags.
It will be rendered inside
<span class="math">
tags.
It will be rendered, if possible, using unicode characters, and will otherwise appear verbatim.
If the --mathml
flag is used, it will
be rendered using mathml in an
inlineequation
or
informalequation
tag. Otherwise it will
be rendered, if possible, using unicode characters.
It will be rendered using OMML math markup.
If the --webtex
option is used,
formulas are rendered as images using Google Charts or
other compatible web service, downloaded and embedded in
the e-book. Otherwise, they will appear verbatim.
The way math is rendered in HTML will depend on the command-line options selected:
The default is to render TeX math as far as possible
using unicode characters, as with RTF, DocBook, and
OpenDocument output. Formulas are put inside a
span
with
class="math"
, so that
they may be styled differently from the surrounding
text if needed.
If the --latexmathml
option is
used, TeX math will be displayed between
$
or $$
characters and put in <span>
tags with class LaTeX
. The
LaTeXMathML
script will be used to render it as formulas. (This
trick does not work in all browsers, but it works in
Firefox. In browsers that do not support LaTeXMathML,
TeX math will appear verbatim between
$
characters.)
If the --jsmath
option is used, TeX
math will be put inside
<span>
tags (for inline math)
or <div>
tags (for display
math) with class math
. The
jsMath
script will be used to render it.
If the --mimetex
option is used,
the
mimeTeX
CGI script will be called to generate images for each
TeX formula. This should work in all browsers. The
--mimetex
option takes an optional
URL as argument. If no URL is specified, it will be
assumed that the mimeTeX CGI script is at
/cgi-bin/mimetex.cgi
.
If the --gladtex
option is used,
TeX formulas will be enclosed in
<eq>
tags in the HTML output.
The resulting htex
file may then be
processed by
gladTeX,
which will produce image files for each formula and an
html
file with links to these
images. So, the procedure is:
pandoc -s --gladtex myfile.txt -o myfile.htex gladtex -d myfile-images myfile.htex # produces myfile.html and images in myfile-images
If the --webtex
option is used, TeX
formulas will be converted to
<img>
tags that link to an
external script that converts formulas to images. The
formula will be URL-encoded and concatenated with the
URL provided. If no URL is specified, the Google Chart
API will be used
(http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=tx&chl=
).
If the --mathjax
option is used,
TeX math will be displayed between
\(...\)
(for inline math) or
\[...\]
(for display math) and put
in <span>
tags with class
math
. The
MathJax
script will be used to render it as formulas.
Markdown allows you to insert raw HTML (or DocBook) anywhere in
a document (except verbatim contexts, where
<
, >
, and
&
are interpreted literally).
(Technically this is not an extension, since standard markdown
allows it, but it has been made an extension so that it can be
disabled if desired.)
The raw HTML is passed through unchanged in HTML, S5, Slidy, Slideous, DZSlides, EPUB, Markdown, and Textile output, and suppressed in other formats.
Standard markdown allows you to include HTML
“blocks”: blocks of HTML between balanced tags that
are separated from the surrounding text with blank lines, and
start and end at the left margin. Within these blocks,
everything is interpreted as HTML, not markdown; so (for
example), *
does not signify emphasis.
Pandoc behaves this way when the
markdown_strict
format is used; but by
default, pandoc interprets material between HTML block tags as
markdown. Thus, for example, Pandoc will turn
<table> <tr> <td>*one*</td> <td>[a link](http://google.com)</td> </tr> </table>
into
<table> <tr> <td><em>one</em></td> <td><a href="http://google.com">a link</a></td> </tr> </table>
whereas Markdown.pl
will preserve it as is.
There is one exception to this rule: text between
<script>
and
<style>
tags is not interpreted as
markdown.
This departure from standard markdown should make it easier to
mix markdown with HTML block elements. For example, one can
surround a block of markdown text with
<div>
tags without preventing it from
being interpreted as markdown.
Use native pandoc Div
blocks for content
inside <div>
tags. For the most part
this should give the same output as
markdown_in_html_blocks
, but it makes it
easier to write pandoc filters to manipulate groups of blocks.
In addition to raw HTML, pandoc allows raw LaTeX, TeX, and ConTeXt to be included in a document. Inline TeX commands will be preserved and passed unchanged to the LaTeX and ConTeXt writers. Thus, for example, you can use LaTeX to include BibTeX citations:
This result was proved in \cite{jones.1967}.
Note that in LaTeX environments, like
\begin{tabular}{|l|l|}\hline Age & Frequency \\ \hline 18--25 & 15 \\ 26--35 & 33 \\ 36--45 & 22 \\ \hline \end{tabular}
the material between the begin and end tags will be interpreted as raw LaTeX, not as markdown.
Inline LaTeX is ignored in output formats other than Markdown, LaTeX, and ConTeXt.
For output formats other than LaTeX, pandoc will parse LaTeX
\newcommand
and
\renewcommand
definitions and apply the
resulting macros to all LaTeX math. So, for example, the
following will work in all output formats, not just LaTeX:
⟨a, b, c⟩
In LaTeX output, the \newcommand
definition
will simply be passed unchanged to the output.
Markdown allows links to be specified in several ways.
If you enclose a URL or email address in pointy brackets, it will become a link:
<http://google.com> <sam@green.eggs.ham>
An inline link consists of the link text in square brackets, followed by the URL in parentheses. (Optionally, the URL can be followed by a link title, in quotes.)
This is an [inline link](/url), and here's [one with a title](http://fsf.org "click here for a good time!").
There can be no space between the bracketed part and the parenthesized part. The link text can contain formatting (such as emphasis), but the title cannot.
Email addresses in inline links are not autodetected, so they
have to be prefixed with mailto
:
[Write me!](mailto:sam@green.eggs.ham)
An explicit reference link has two parts, the link itself and the link definition, which may occur elsewhere in the document (either before or after the link).
The link consists of link text in square brackets, followed by a
label in square brackets. (There can be space between the two.)
The link definition consists of the bracketed label, followed by
a colon and a space, followed by the URL, and optionally (after
a space) a link title either in quotes or in parentheses. The
label must not be parseable as a citation (assuming the
citations
extension is enabled): citations
take precedence over link labels.
Here are some examples:
[my label 1]: /foo/bar.html "My title, optional" [my label 2]: /foo [my label 3]: http://fsf.org (The free software foundation) [my label 4]: /bar#special 'A title in single quotes'
The URL may optionally be surrounded by angle brackets:
[my label 5]: <http://foo.bar.baz>
The title may go on the next line:
[my label 3]: http://fsf.org "The free software foundation"
Note that link labels are not case sensitive. So, this will work:
Here is [my link][FOO] [Foo]: /bar/baz
In an implicit reference link, the second pair of brackets is empty, or omitted entirely:
See [my website][], or [my website]. [my website]: http://foo.bar.baz
Note: In Markdown.pl
and most other markdown
implementations, reference link definitions cannot occur in
nested constructions such as list items or block quotes. Pandoc
lifts this arbitrary seeming restriction. So the following is
fine in pandoc, though not in most other implementations:
> My block [quote]. > > [quote]: /foo
To link to another section of the same document, use the automatically generated identifier (see Header identifiers in HTML, LaTeX, and ConTeXt, below). For example:
See the [Introduction](#introduction).
or
See the [Introduction]. [Introduction]: #introduction
Internal links are currently supported for HTML formats (including HTML slide shows and EPUB), LaTeX, and ConTeXt.
A link immediately preceded by a !
will be
treated as an image. The link text will be used as the image’s alt
text:
 ![movie reel] [movie reel]: movie.gif
An image occurring by itself in a paragraph will be rendered as
a figure with a caption.[4] (In LaTeX, a figure environment will be used; in
HTML, the image will be placed in a div
with
class figure
, together with a caption in a
p
with class caption
.) The
image’s alt text will be used as the caption.

If you just want a regular inline image, just make sure it is not the only thing in the paragraph. One way to do this is to insert a nonbreaking space after the image:
\
Pandoc’s markdown allows footnotes, using the following syntax:
Here is a footnote reference,[^1] and another.[^longnote] [^1]: Here is the footnote. [^longnote]: Here's one with multiple blocks. Subsequent paragraphs are indented to show that they belong to the previous footnote. { some.code } The whole paragraph can be indented, or just the first line. In this way, multi-paragraph footnotes work like multi-paragraph list items. This paragraph won't be part of the note, because it isn't indented.
The identifiers in footnote references may not contain spaces, tabs, or newlines. These identifiers are used only to correlate the footnote reference with the note itself; in the output, footnotes will be numbered sequentially.
The footnotes themselves need not be placed at the end of the document. They may appear anywhere except inside other block elements (lists, block quotes, tables, etc.).
Inline footnotes are also allowed (though, unlike regular notes, they cannot contain multiple paragraphs). The syntax is as follows:
Here is an inline note.^[Inlines notes are easier to write, since you don't have to pick an identifier and move down to type the note.]
Inline and regular footnotes may be mixed freely.
Using an external filter, pandoc-citeproc
,
pandoc can automatically generate citations and a bibliography
in a number of styles. Basic usage is
pandoc --filter pandoc-citeproc myinput.txt
In order to use this feature, you will need to specify a
bibliography file using the bibliography
metadata field in a YAML metadata section. The bibliography may
have any of these formats:
Format | File extension |
---|---|
MODS | .mods |
BibLaTeX | .bib |
BibTeX | .bibtex |
RIS | .ris |
EndNote | .enl |
EndNote XML | .xml |
ISI | .wos |
MEDLINE | .medline |
Copac | .copac |
JSON citeproc | .json |
Note that .bib
can generally be used with
both BibTeX and BibLaTeX files, but you can use
.bibtex
to force BibTeX.
As an alternative to specifying a bibliography file, you can
include the citation data directly in the
references
field of the document’s YAML
metadata. The field should contain an array of YAML-encoded
references, for example:
--- references: - id: fenner2012a title: One-click science marketing author: - family: Fenner given: Martin container-title: Nature Materials volume: 11 URL: 'http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nmat3283' DOI: 10.1038/nmat3283 issue: 4 publisher: Nature Publishing Group page: 261-263 type: article-journal issued: year: 2012 month: 3 ...
(The program mods2yaml
, which comes with
pandoc-citeproc
, can help produce these from
a MODS reference collection.)
By default, pandoc-citeproc
will use a
Chicago author-date format for citations and references. To use
another style, you will need to specify a
CSL 1.0 style
file in the csl
metadata field. A primer on
creating and modifying CSL styles can be found at
http://citationstyles.org/downloads/primer.html.
A repository of CSL styles can be found at
https://github.com/citation-style-language/styles.
See also
http://zotero.org/styles
for easy browsing.
Citations go inside square brackets and are separated by
semicolons. Each citation must have a key, composed of
“@” + the citation identifier from the database,
and may optionally have a prefix, a locator, and a suffix. The
citation key must begin with a letter or _
,
and may contain alphanumerics, _
, and
internal punctuation characters
(:.#$%&-+?<>~/
). Here are some
examples:
Blah blah [see @doe99, pp. 33-35; also @smith04, ch. 1]. Blah blah [@doe99, pp. 33-35, 38-39 and *passim*]. Blah blah [@smith04; @doe99].
A minus sign (-
) before the
@
will suppress mention of the author in the
citation. This can be useful when the author is already
mentioned in the text:
Smith says blah [-@smith04].
You can also write an in-text citation, as follows:
@smith04 says blah. @smith04 [p. 33] says blah.
If the style calls for a list of works cited, it will be placed at the end of the document. Normally, you will want to end your document with an appropriate header:
last paragraph... # References
The bibliography will be inserted after this header. Note that
the unnumbered
class will be added to this
header, so that the section will not be numbered.
If you want to include items in the bibliography without
actually citing them in the body text, you can define a dummy
nocite
metadata field and put the citations
there:
--- nocite: | @item1, @item2 ... @item3
In this example, the document will contain a citation for
item3
only, but the bibliography will contain
entries for item1
, item2
,
and item3
.
The following markdown syntax extensions are not enabled by
default in pandoc, but may be enabled by adding
+EXTENSION
to the format name, where
EXTENSION
is the name of the extension. Thus,
for example, markdown+hard_line_breaks
is
markdown with hard line breaks.
Allow a list to occur right after a paragraph, with no intervening blank space.
Causes all newlines within a paragraph to be interpreted as hard line breaks instead of spaces.
Causes newlines within a paragraph to be ignored, rather than being treated as spaces or as hard line breaks. This option is intended for use with East Asian languages where spaces are not used between words, but text is divided into lines for readability.
Causes anything between \(
and
\)
to be interpreted as inline TeX math, and
anything between \[
and \]
to be interpreted as display TeX math. Note: a drawback of this
extension is that it precludes escaping (
and
[
.
Causes anything between \\(
and
\\)
to be interpreted as inline TeX math, and
anything between \\[
and
\\]
to be interpreted as display TeX math.
By default, pandoc interprets material inside block-level tags
as markdown. This extension changes the behavior so that
markdown is only parsed inside block-level tags if the tags have
the attribute markdown=1
.
Enables a MultiMarkdown style title block at the top of the document, for example:
Title: My title Author: John Doe Date: September 1, 2008 Comment: This is a sample mmd title block, with a field spanning multiple lines.
See the MultiMarkdown documentation for details. If
pandoc_title_block
or
yaml_metadata_block
is enabled, it will take
precedence over mmd_title_block
.
Parses PHP Markdown Extra abbreviation keys, like
*[HTML]: Hyper Text Markup Language
Note that the pandoc document model does not support abbreviations, so if this extension is enabled, abbreviation keys are simply skipped (as opposed to being parsed as paragraphs).
Makes all absolute URIs into links, even when not surrounded by
pointy braces <...>
.
Causes the identifiers produced by
auto_identifiers
to be pure ASCII. Accents
are stripped off of accented latin letters, and non-latin
letters are omitted.
Parses multimarkdown style key-value attributes on link and image references. Note that pandoc’s internal document model provides nowhere to put these, so they are presently just ignored.
Parses multimarkdown style header identifiers (in square
brackets, after the header but before any trailing
#
s in an ATX header).
Activates the definition list syntax of pandoc 1.12.x and earlier. This syntax differs from the one described above in several respects:
No blank line is required between consecutive items of the definition list.
To get a “tight” or “compact” list, omit space between consecutive items; the space between a term and its definition does not affect anything.
Lazy wrapping of paragraphs is not allowed: the entire definition must be indented four spaces.[5]
In addition to pandoc’s extended markdown, the following markdown variants are supported:
markdown_phpextra
(PHP Markdown Extra)
footnotes
,
pipe_tables
, raw_html
,
markdown_attribute
,
fenced_code_blocks
,
definition_lists
,
intraword_underscores
,
header_attributes
,
abbreviations
.
markdown_github
(Github-flavored Markdown)
pipe_tables
, raw_html
,
tex_math_single_backslash
,
fenced_code_blocks
,
auto_identifiers
,
ascii_identifiers
,
backtick_code_blocks
,
autolink_bare_uris
,
intraword_underscores
,
strikeout
,
hard_line_breaks
markdown_mmd
(MultiMarkdown)
pipe_tables
raw_html
,
markdown_attribute
,
link_attributes
,
raw_tex
,
tex_math_double_backslash
,
intraword_underscores
,
mmd_title_block
,
footnotes
,
definition_lists
,
all_symbols_escapable
,
implicit_header_references
,
auto_identifiers
,
mmd_header_identifiers
markdown_strict
(Markdown.pl)
raw_html
Some of the extensions discussed above can be used with formats other than markdown:
auto_identifiers
can be used with
latex
, rst
,
mediawiki
, and textile
input (and is used by default).
tex_math_dollars
,
tex_math_single_backslash
, and
tex_math_double_backslash
can be used with
html
input. (This is handy for reading web
pages formatted using MathJax, for example.)
[1] The point of this rule is to ensure that normal paragraphs starting with people’s initials, like
B. Russell was an English philosopher.
do not get treated as list items.
This rule will not prevent
(C) 2007 Joe Smith
from being interpreted as a list item. In this case, a backslash escape can be used:
(C\) 2007 Joe Smith
[2] I have been influenced by the suggestions of David Wheeler.
[3] This scheme is due to Michel Fortin, who proposed it on the Markdown discussion list.
[4] This feature is not yet implemented for RTF, OpenDocument, or ODT. In those formats, you’ll just get an image in a paragraph by itself, with no caption.
[5] To see why laziness is incompatible with relaxing the requirement of a blank line between items, consider the following example:
bar : definition foo : definition
Is this a single list item with two definitions of “bar,” the first of which is lazily wrapped, or two list items? To remove the ambiguity we must either disallow lazy wrapping or require a blank line between list items.