This article originally appeared on The Fulcrum.

Looking at every (core) Markdown option for Bear websites

This article will cover writing Markdown using its core syntax. BTW, it was also written in MD. And writing about Markdown examples in MD is not easy. Thankfully there is a code block. ;)

Fortunately, writing in Markdown about anything else is very easy.

I was first exposed to MD in a coding bootcamp I suffered through in 2018. While the torture covered many aspects of programming, Markdown was one of the few I enjoyed while learning to become a web developer.

Today it is the standard format for writing programming documentation, text in git repositories, and increasingly the content of websites. It has the unfortunate side effect of being easily read by AI scrappers as well.

And it's also what you use to write the content for your Bear site with. That's just one of the many reasons it's awesome. (You can also use HTML in Bear, but that's another article. As is CSS which makes your Markdown-converted HTML pretty.)

A Markdown document is a plain text file, usually ending in .md and the more rarely used .markdown. You format it with ordinary punctuation and a processor turns it into HTML.

Most formatting is either block level - like paragraphs, headings and lists. The rest is inline - like bold, italic, and links. A blank line separates one block from the next. This paragraph explains most of Markdown.

The core syntax covered here is very simple so there are some extension/variations of Markdown that have been developed for more robust use cases.

They include:

  • GitHub (fuck Microslop)

  • Codeberg

  • GitLab

  • Obsidian

  • Joplin

  • VS Code (Use in VS Codium instead)

  • Reddit (fuck Reddit)

  • Pandoc

But in this article, I will cover the core syntax options in the order of how often they are used. In other words you will use the items at the top of the following options much more than those at the bottom. Some of which you may never use.

Here's a link list so you can easily reference exactly what you need at a later date.

 

Headings

Start a line with one to six # characters for headings level 1 to 6. These render as HTML elements h1, h2, h3, etc.

If you write:

# Title
## Section
### Sub-section
etc, etc.

The rendered page shows:

Title

Section

Sub-section

Paragraphs

Paragraph are written as simple text.
You can have multiple lines in a paragraph like this.
Markdown joins these lines into a single paragraph.

For a new paragraph leave a line of blank text in between.

The rendered page shows:

Paragraph are written as simple text. You can have multiple lines in a paragraph like this. Markdown joins these lines into a single paragraph.

For a new paragraph leave a line of blank text in between.

Spacers

For a larger gap between the final paragraph of a section and before the next header you can use the spacer shorthand "& n b s p ;" without the spaces between characters and the quotation marks.

Line breaks

If you need to break a line inside a paragraph without starting a new one, end the line with a backslash.

So, if you are inserting an address or writing poetry you are all set. Each line will appear on its own but all the lines will show as one paragraph.

If you type:

Initial line.\ 
Subsequent line.

It renders on the page as:

Initial line.
Subsequent line.

Formatting

When formatting text in Markdown you wrap words in markers: one asterisk for italic, two for bold, two tildes for strikethrough.

Underline, color, and comments have no markers of their own, so they use HTML. Which works inside Markdown documents.

Italic

Any text which has * or _ on either side of it renders italicized text. Three markers together provide bold italic text.

So if you type:

*italic* or _italic_
***bold italic***

The rendered document shows:

italic or italic
bold italic

Bold

Likewise, text which has ** or __ on both sides represents bold text.

When you write:

**bold** or __bold__

You get

bold or bold

Underline

There is no syntax in Markdown for underline because underlined text reads as a link on the web. When you need underlined text that is not a link, use the HTML < u > tag. Although why would you need it?

Anyway, if you write this HTML:

<u>underlined</u>

It renders:

underlined and is not a link.

Strikethrough

To strikethrough text, use ~~ on both sides.

When you type:

~~strikethrough~~

You get this on the page:

strikethrough

Color

Like underline, Markdown has no syntax for color. Ideally, you would cover this is a connected CSS stylesheet. Luckily, you can us an HTML with an inline style if you don't know CSS and your processor allows it.

If you write:

<span style="color:purple">purple text</span>

You get:

purple text

Note that some sites strip style attributes for safety, so this shows as plain text on GitHub, Reddit, and others. On GitHub you can color text by using a math expression instead of HTML.

Such as:

$\color{purple}{text}$.

Images

To add an image in Markdown, write an exclamation mark, the alt text/image description in square brackets, then the path or URL to the image in parentheses. If you didn't know alt text describes the image for screen readers and if the image fails to load.

If you write:

![Illustration of space with galaxies, planets, moons, stars, spaceships, and astronaut](https://www.thefulcrum.dev/content/images/2026/01/TPF-Header-Image-1.jpg)

or 

![TPF header image](https://www.thefulcrum.dev/content/images/2026/01/TPF-Header-Image-1.jpg) "Right click this image to save it to your computer."

It renders the image like this:

or

"Right click this image to save it to your computer."

Markdown always places your image at its at its orginial width. You can control the width using HTML. Or better yet edit the image to the maximum size you want before inserting it. Browsers will generally scale it down for smaller screen sizes.

FYI, you also have to insert videos with HTML.

Links

To add a link in Markdown, put the link text in square brackets and the URL in parentheses. The simplest link of all is an URL wrapped in angle brackets, which most processors turn into a clickable link even without them.

Just type:

<https://markdown.org>

To get:

https://markdown.org

To show some words for the link instead of the URL (and for web accessibility), put the link text in square brackets and the URL in parentheses.

So, write:

[Visit this link](https://www.thefulcrum.dev)

And you get:

Visit this link

Lists

When you need a list in Markdown, you begin each line with -, * or + for a bullet list, or 1. style numbers for an ordered list. Indent by two to four spaces to nest a sub-list. The actual numbers you type are counted for you by the renderer.

Enter:

- Plane manufacturer
  - Boeing
  - Airbus
- Train manufacturer

1. First
2. Second
3. Third

And you can put links in lists.

- [Links](#links)
- [Lists](#lists)

And the browser renders:

  • Plane manufacturer

    • Boeing

    • Airbus

  • Train manufacturer

  1. 1.

    First

  2. 2.

    Second

  3. 3.

    Third

And you can put links in lists.

Horizontal rules

Three or more dashes, asterisks or underscores alone on a line draw a thematic break.

Why? Who knows. Just remember your choice and stick with it.

If you type:

A first paragraph.

---

A second paragraph.

***

A third paragraph.

___

A fourth paragraph.

On your site's page you see:

A first paragraph.

A second paragraph.

A third paragraph.

A fourth paragraph.

Blockquotes

If you want to quote text, prefix the lines with >. These blockquotes are nestable and may contain additional Markdown syntax.

So, if you enter:

> Markdown is intended to be
> as easy-to-read as possible.
>
> > Even nested quotes work.

The browser renders:

Markdown is intended to be
as easy-to-read as possible.
Even nested quotes work.

Comments

To leave a note in the source that is not visible on the page, you use an HTML comment. It renders as blank space.

When you write:

Visible text.
<!-- a note to yourself -->
More visible text.

You see:

Visible text.

More visible text.

Note that your comment is visible in the HTML source code, so it is hidden from readers rather than secret. With some effort they can find and view it.

Code

To display code in Markdown (as we have done throughout this article) you have two options.

Wrap inline snippets in single backticks.

For a block of code fence it between triple backticks and optionally name the language for syntax highlighting.

If you write this block:

<?php
$str = "Hello world!";
print $str;
print "<br>What a nice day!";
?>

It renders as:

Hello world!

What a nice day!

Tables

You build tables with pipes | and hyphens -.

Here is a Markdown table:

| First Header  | Second Header |
| ------------- | ------------- |
| Content Cell  | Content Cell  |
| Content Cell  | Content Cell  |

Which is rendered as:

First Header | Second Header

Content Cell | Content Cell

Content Cell | Content Cell

You must use at least 3 dashes separating each header cell.

Colons can be used to align columns:

| Tables        | Are           | Cool  |
| ------------- |:-------------:| -----:|
| col 3 is      | right-aligned | **as in** 😎 |
| col 2 is      | **centered**      | 🥶 |

Tables | Are | Cool

col 3 is | right-aligned | as in😎

col 2 is | centered | 🥶

Escaping

This is getting a little more complicated, but Markdown treats some characters as commands. If you have some programming chops, think of command line commands.

To show one of these characters on the page, you escape it. Do so by putting a backslash \ before that character.

Characters | Typed Character

You can escape ⬇️ | If you type ⬇️ preceded by \

\ backslash | \

` backtick | `

* asterisk | *

_ underscore | _

{ left brace | {

} right brace | }

[ left bracket | [

] right bracket | ]

( left parenthesis | (

) right parenthesis | )

# hash | #

+ plus | +

- minus | -

. dot | .

! exclamation mark | !

| pipe | \

Some of the examples above render like this:

`
*
_

etc, etc, etc.

Basic Footnotes

If needed, you can add footnotes with Markdown.

This is an example of a footnote at the end of a sentence.[^label]

[^label]: The footnote's content is displayed at the end of the page with a return symbol to bring you back to the sentence with the footnote at the end.

The syntax above renders as:

This is an example of a footnote at the end of a sentence.1

And the footnote's content is displayed at the end of the page. As seen at the bottom of this article. ⬇️

Wrapping it up

OK. I think that is more than enough on basic Markdown syntax. Unless you have a photographic memory, please bookmark this page to reference later as you need to use the examples. I have to look this stuff up frequently and I write MD everyday.

Thanks for reading and enjoy writing on your Bear blog with Markdown! We want to hear what you have to say.

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Explore more

If you want to learn more about additional Markdown functionality, here are some resources. Enjoy.

Markdown flavors and extras:

Bear resources

To learn more about additional technical aspects of Bear visit this link.