MARKDOWN(5)                   File Formats Manual                  MARKDOWN(5)

NAME
       markdown - humane markup syntax

SYNOPSIS
         # Header 1 #
         ## Header 2 ##
         ### Header 3 ###             (Hashes on right are optional)
         #### Header 4 ####
         ##### Header 5 #####

         This is a paragraph, which is text surrounded by whitespace.
         Paragraphs can be on one line (or many), and can drone on for
         hours.

         [Reference style links][1] and [inline links](http://example.com)
         [1]: http://example.com "Title is optional"

         Inline markup like _italics_,  **bold**, and `code()`.

         ![picture alt](/images/photo.jpeg "Title is optional")

         > Blockquotes are like quoted text in email replies
         >> And, they can be nested

             code blocks are for preformatted
             text and must be indented with four spaces

         * Bullet lists are easy too
           * You can
           * even
           * nest them
         - Another one
         + Another one

DESCRIPTION
   Philosophy
       Markdown is intended to be as easy-to-read and easy-to-write as is fea‐
       sible.

       Readability,  however, is emphasized above all else. A Markdown-format‐
       ted
       document should be publishable as-is, as plain text, without looking
       like it's been marked up with tags or formatting instructions. While
       Markdown's syntax has been influenced by several existing text-to-HTML
       filters -- including ]8;;http://docutils.sourceforge.net/mirror/setext.html\Setext]8;;\,

       ]8;;http://www.aaronsw.com/2002/atx/\atx]8;;\,

       ]8;;http://textism.com/tools/textile/\Textile]8;;\,

       ]8;;http://docutils.sourceforge.net/rst.html\reStructuredText]8;;\,

       ]8;;http://www.triptico.com/software/grutatxt.html\Grutatext]8;;\, and ]8;;http://ettext.taint.org/doc/\EtText]8;;\ -- the single biggest source of
       inspiration for Markdown's syntax is the format of plain text email.

       To this end, Markdown's syntax is comprised entirely of punctuation
       characters, which punctuation characters have been carefully chosen so
       as to look like what they mean. E.g., asterisks around a word actually
       look like *emphasis*. Markdown lists look like, well, lists. Even
       blockquotes look like quoted passages of text, assuming you've ever
       used email.

   Inline HTML
       Markdown's syntax is intended for one purpose: to be used as a
       format for writing for the web.

       Markdown is not a replacement for HTML, or even close to it. Its
       syntax is very small, corresponding only to a very small subset of
       HTML tags. The idea is not to create a syntax that makes it easier
       to insert HTML tags. In my opinion, HTML tags are already easy to
       insert. The idea for Markdown is to make it easy to read, write, and
       edit prose. HTML is a publishing format; Markdown is a writing
       format. Thus, Markdown's formatting syntax only addresses issues that
       can be conveyed in plain text.

       For any markup that is not covered by Markdown's syntax, you simply
       use HTML itself. There's no need to preface it or delimit it to
       indicate that you're switching from Markdown to HTML; you just use
       the tags.

       The only restrictions are that block-level HTML elements -- e.g. <div>,
       <table>, <pre>, <p>, etc. -- must be separated from surrounding
       content by blank lines, and the start and end tags of the block should
       not be indented with tabs or spaces. Markdown is smart enough not
       to add extra (unwanted) <p> tags around HTML block-level tags.

       For example, to add an HTML table to a Markdown article:
         This is a regular paragraph.

         <table>
             <tr>
                 <td>Foo</td>
             </tr>
         </table>

         This is another regular paragraph.

       Note  that  Markdown  formatting  syntax  is   not   processed   within
       block-level
       HTML tags. E.g., you can't use Markdown-style *emphasis* inside an
       HTML block.

       Span-level HTML tags -- e.g. <span>, <cite>, or <del> -- can be
       used anywhere in a Markdown paragraph, list item, or header. If you
       want,  you  can even use HTML tags instead of Markdown formatting; e.g.
       if
       you'd prefer to use HTML <a> or <img> tags instead of Markdown's
       link or image syntax, go right ahead.

       Unlike block-level HTML tags, Markdown syntax is processed within
       span-level tags.

   Automatic Escaping for Special Characters
       In HTML, there are two characters that demand special treatment: <
       and &. Left angle brackets are used to start tags; ampersands are
       used to denote HTML entities. If you want to use them as literal
       characters, you must escape them as entities, e.g. &lt;, and
       &amp;.

       Ampersands in particular are bedeviling for web writers. If you want to
       write about 'AT&T', you need to write 'AT&amp;T'. You even need to
       escape ampersands within URLs. Thus, if you want to link to:
         http://images.google.com/images?num=30&q=larry+bird

       you need to encode the URL as:
         http://images.google.com/images?num=30&amp;q=larry+bird

       in your anchor tag href attribute. Needless to say, this is easy to
       forget, and is probably the single most common source of  HTML  valida‐
       tion
       errors in otherwise well-marked-up web sites.

       Markdown allows you to use these characters naturally, taking care of
       all the necessary escaping for you. If you use an ampersand as part of
       an HTML entity, it remains unchanged; otherwise it will be translated
       into &amp;.

       So,  if you want to include a copyright symbol in your article, you can
       write:
         &copy;

       and Markdown will leave it alone. But if you write:
         AT&T

       Markdown will translate it to:
         AT&amp;T

       Similarly, because Markdown supports inline HTML if you use
       angle brackets as delimiters for HTML tags, Markdown will treat them as
       such. But if you write:
         4 < 5

       Markdown will translate it to:
         4 &lt; 5

       However, inside Markdown code spans and blocks, angle brackets and
       ampersands are always encoded automatically. This makes it easy to use
       Markdown to write about HTML code. (As opposed to raw HTML, which is a
       terrible format for writing about HTML syntax, because every single <
       and & in your example code needs to be escaped.)

BLOCK ELEMENTS
   Paragraphs and Line Breaks
       A paragraph is simply one or more consecutive lines of text, separated
       by one or more blank lines. (A blank line is any line that looks like a
       blank line -- a line containing nothing but spaces or tabs  is  consid‐
       ered
       blank.) Normal paragraphs should not be indented with spaces or tabs.

       The implication of the "one or more consecutive lines of text" rule is
       that Markdown supports "hard-wrapped" text paragraphs. This differs
       significantly  from  most other text-to-HTML formatters (including Mov‐
       able
       Type's "Convert Line Breaks" option) which translate every line break
       character in a paragraph into a <br /> tag.

       When you do want to insert a <br /> break tag using Markdown, you
       end a line with two or more spaces, then type return.

       Yes, this takes a tad more effort to create a <br />, but a simplistic
       "every line break is a <br />" rule wouldn't work for Markdown.
       Markdown's email-style blockquoting and multi-paragraph list items
       work best -- and look better -- when you format them with hard breaks.

   Headers
       Markdown supports two styles of headers, [Setext] ]8;;http://docutils.sourceforge.net/mirror/setext.html\1]8;;\ and [atx] ]8;;http://www.aaronsw.com/2002/atx/\2]8;;\.

       Setext-style  headers  are  "underlined"   using   equal   signs   (for
       first-level
       headers) and dashes (for second-level headers). For example:
         This is an H1
         =============

         This is an H2
         -------------

       Any number of underlining ='s or -'s will work.

       Atx-style headers use 1-6 hash characters at the start of the line,
       corresponding to header levels 1-6. For example:
         # This is an H1

         ## This is an H2

         ###### This is an H6

       Optionally, you may "close" atx-style headers. This is purely
       cosmetic -- you can use this if you think it looks better. The
       closing hashes don't even need to match the number of hashes
       used to open the header. (The number of opening hashes
       determines the header level.) :
         # This is an H1 #

         ## This is an H2 ##

         ### This is an H3 ######

   Blockquotes
       Markdown uses email-style > characters for blockquoting. If you're
       familiar with quoting passages of text in an email message, then you
       know how to create a blockquote in Markdown. It looks best if you hard
       wrap the text and put a > before every line:
         > This is a blockquote with two paragraphs. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet,
         > consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aliquam hendrerit mi posuere lectus.
         > Vestibulum enim wisi, viverra nec, fringilla in, laoreet vitae, risus.
         >
         > Donec sit amet nisl. Aliquam semper ipsum sit amet velit. Suspendisse
         > id sem consectetuer libero luctus adipiscing.

       Markdown allows you to be lazy and only put the > before the first
       line of a hard-wrapped paragraph:
         > This is a blockquote with two paragraphs. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet,
         consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aliquam hendrerit mi posuere lectus.
         Vestibulum enim wisi, viverra nec, fringilla in, laoreet vitae, risus.

         > Donec sit amet nisl. Aliquam semper ipsum sit amet velit. Suspendisse
         id sem consectetuer libero luctus adipiscing.

       Blockquotes can be nested (i.e. a blockquote-in-a-blockquote) by
       adding additional levels of >:
         > This is the first level of quoting.
         >
         > > This is nested blockquote.
         >
         > Back to the first level.

       Blockquotes  can  contain  other  Markdown elements, including headers,
       lists,
       and code blocks:
         > ## This is a header.
         >
         > 1.   This is the first list item.
         > 2.   This is the second list item.
         >
         > Here's some example code:
         >
         >     return shell_exec("echo $input | $markdown_script");

       Any decent text editor should make email-style quoting easy. For
       example, with BBEdit, you can make a selection and choose Increase
       Quote Level from the Text menu.

   Lists
       Markdown supports ordered (numbered) and unordered (bulleted) lists.

       Unordered lists use asterisks, pluses, and hyphens -- interchangably
       -- as list markers:
         *   Red
         *   Green
         *   Blue

       is equivalent to:
         +   Red
         +   Green
         +   Blue

       and:
         -   Red
         -   Green
         -   Blue

       Ordered lists use numbers followed by periods:
         1.  Bird
         2.  McHale
         3.  Parish

       It's important to note that the actual numbers you use to mark the
       list have no effect on the HTML output Markdown produces. The HTML
       Markdown produces from the above list is:
         <ol>
         <li>Bird</li>
         <li>McHale</li>
         <li>Parish</li>
         </ol>

       If you instead wrote the list in Markdown like this:
         1.  Bird
         1.  McHale
         1.  Parish

       or even:
         3. Bird
         1. McHale
         8. Parish

       you'd get the exact same HTML output. The point is, if you want to,
       you can use ordinal numbers in your ordered Markdown lists, so that
       the numbers in your source match the numbers in your published HTML.
       But if you want to be lazy, you don't have to.

       If you do use lazy list numbering, however, you should still start the
       list with the number 1. At some point in the future, Markdown may  sup‐
       port
       starting ordered lists at an arbitrary number.

       List markers typically start at the left margin, but may be indented by
       up to three spaces. List markers must be followed by one or more spaces
       or a tab.

       To make lists look nice, you can wrap items with hanging indents:
         *   Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit.
             Aliquam hendrerit mi posuere lectus. Vestibulum enim wisi,
             viverra nec, fringilla in, laoreet vitae, risus.
         *   Donec sit amet nisl. Aliquam semper ipsum sit amet velit.
             Suspendisse id sem consectetuer libero luctus adipiscing.

       But if you want to be lazy, you don't have to:
         *   Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit.
         Aliquam hendrerit mi posuere lectus. Vestibulum enim wisi,
         viverra nec, fringilla in, laoreet vitae, risus.
         *   Donec sit amet nisl. Aliquam semper ipsum sit amet velit.
         Suspendisse id sem consectetuer libero luctus adipiscing.

       If list items are separated by blank lines, Markdown will wrap the
       items in <p> tags in the HTML output. For example, this input:
         *   Bird
         *   Magic

       will turn into:
         <ul>
         <li>Bird</li>
         <li>Magic</li>
         </ul>

       But this:
         *   Bird

         *   Magic

       will turn into:
         <ul>
         <li><p>Bird</p></li>
         <li><p>Magic</p></li>
         </ul>

       List items may consist of multiple paragraphs. Each subsequent
       paragraph in a list item must be indented by either 4 spaces
       or one tab:
         1.  This is a list item with two paragraphs. Lorem ipsum dolor
             sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aliquam hendrerit
             mi posuere lectus.

             Vestibulum enim wisi, viverra nec, fringilla in, laoreet
             vitae, risus. Donec sit amet nisl. Aliquam semper ipsum
             sit amet velit.

         2.  Suspendisse id sem consectetuer libero luctus adipiscing.

       It looks nice if you indent every line of the subsequent
       paragraphs, but here again, Markdown will allow you to be
       lazy:
         *   This is a list item with two paragraphs.

             This is the second paragraph in the list item. You're
         only required to indent the first line. Lorem ipsum dolor
         sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit.

         *   Another item in the same list.

       To put a blockquote within a list item, the blockquote's >
       delimiters need to be indented:
         *   A list item with a blockquote:

             > This is a blockquote
             > inside a list item.

       To put a code block within a list item, the code block needs
       to be indented twice -- 8 spaces or two tabs:
         *   A list item with a code block:

                 <code goes here>

       It's worth noting that it's possible to trigger an ordered list by
       accident, by writing something like this:
         1986. What a great season.

       In other words, a number-period-space sequence at the beginning of a
       line. To avoid this, you can backslash-escape the period:
         1986\. What a great season.

   Code Blocks
       Pre-formatted code blocks are used for writing about programming or
       markup source code. Rather than forming normal paragraphs, the lines
       of a code block are interpreted literally. Markdown wraps a code block
       in both <pre> and <code> tags.

       To produce a code block in Markdown, simply indent every line of the
       block by at least 4 spaces or 1 tab. For example, given this input:
         This is a normal paragraph:

             This is a code block.

       Markdown will generate:
         <p>This is a normal paragraph:</p>

         <pre><code>This is a code block.
         </code></pre>

       One level of indentation -- 4 spaces or 1 tab -- is removed from each
       line of the code block. For example, this:
         Here is an example of AppleScript:

             tell application "Foo"
                 beep
             end tell

       will turn into:
         <p>Here is an example of AppleScript:</p>

         <pre><code>tell application "Foo"
             beep
         end tell
         </code></pre>

       A code block continues until it reaches a line that is not indented
       (or the end of the article).

       Within a code block, ampersands (&) and angle brackets (< and >)
       are automatically converted into HTML entities. This makes it very
       easy to include example HTML source code using Markdown -- just paste
       it and indent it, and Markdown will handle the hassle of encoding the
       ampersands and angle brackets. For example, this:
             <div class="footer">
                 &copy; 2004 Foo Corporation
             </div>

       will turn into:
         <pre><code>&lt;div class="footer"&gt;
             &amp;copy; 2004 Foo Corporation
         &lt;/div&gt;
         </code></pre>

       Regular Markdown syntax is not processed within code blocks. E.g.,
       asterisks are just literal asterisks within a code block. This means
       it's also easy to use Markdown to write about Markdown's own syntax.

   Horizontal Rules
       You can produce a horizontal rule tag (<hr />) by placing three or
       more hyphens, asterisks, or underscores on a line by themselves. If you
       wish, you may use spaces between the hyphens or asterisks. Each of the
       following lines will produce a horizontal rule:
         * * *

         ***

         *****

         - - -

         ---------------------------------------

SPAN ELEMENTS
   Links
       Markdown supports two style of links: inline and reference.

       In both styles, the link text is delimited by [square brackets].

       To create an inline link, use a set of regular parentheses immediately
       after the link text's closing square bracket. Inside the parentheses,
       put the URL where you want the link to point, along with an optional
       title for the link, surrounded in quotes. For example:
         This is [an example](http://example.com/ "Title") inline link.

         [This link](http://example.net/) has no title attribute.

       Will produce:
         <p>This is <a href="http://example.com/" title="Title">
         an example</a> inline link.</p>

         <p><a href="http://example.net/">This link</a> has no
         title attribute.</p>

       If you're referring to a local resource on the same server, you can
       use relative paths:
         See my [About](/about/) page for details.

       Reference-style links use a second set of square brackets, inside
       which you place a label of your choosing to identify the link:
         This is [an example][id] reference-style link.

       You can optionally use a space to separate the sets of brackets:
         This is [an example] [id] reference-style link.

       Then, anywhere in the document, you define your link label like this,
       on a line by itself:
         [id]: http://example.com/  "Optional Title Here"

       That is:

        • Square brackets containing the link identifier (optionally
          indented from the left margin using up to three spaces);

        • followed by a colon;

        • followed by one or more spaces (or tabs);

        • followed by the URL for the link;

        • optionally followed by a title attribute for the link, enclosed
          in double or single quotes, or enclosed in parentheses.

       The following three link definitions are equivalent:
         [foo]: http://example.com/  "Optional Title Here"
         [foo]: http://example.com/  'Optional Title Here'
         [foo]: http://example.com/  (Optional Title Here)

       Note: There is a known bug in Markdown.pl 1.0.1 which prevents
       single quotes from being used to delimit link titles.

       The link URL may, optionally, be surrounded by angle brackets:
         [id]: <http://example.com/>  "Optional Title Here"

       You can put the title attribute on the next line and use extra spaces
       or tabs for padding, which tends to look better with longer URLs:
         [id]: http://example.com/longish/path/to/resource/here
             "Optional Title Here"

       Link definitions are only used for creating links during Markdown
       processing, and are stripped from your document in the HTML output.

       Link definition names may consist of letters, numbers, spaces, and
       punctuation -- but they are not case sensitive. E.g. these two
       links:
         [link text][a]
         [link text][A]

       are equivalent.

       The implicit link name shortcut allows you to omit the name of the
       link, in which case the link text itself is used as the name.
       Just use an empty set of square brackets -- e.g., to link the word
       "Google" to the google.com web site, you could simply write:
         [Google][]

       And then define the link:
         [Google]: http://google.com/

       Because link names may contain spaces, this shortcut even works for
       multiple words in the link text:
         Visit [Daring Fireball][] for more information.

       And then define the link:
         [Daring Fireball]: http://daringfireball.net/

       Link definitions can be placed anywhere in your Markdown document. I
       tend to put them immediately after each paragraph in which they're
       used, but if you want, you can put them all at the end of your
       document, sort of like footnotes.

       Here's an example of reference links in action:
         I get 10 times more traffic from [Google] [1] than from
         [Yahoo] [2] or [MSN] [3].

           [1]: http://google.com/        "Google"
           [2]: http://search.yahoo.com/  "Yahoo Search"
           [3]: http://search.msn.com/    "MSN Search"

       Using the implicit link name shortcut, you could instead write:
         I get 10 times more traffic from [Google][] than from
         [Yahoo][] or [MSN][].

           [google]: http://google.com/        "Google"
           [yahoo]:  http://search.yahoo.com/  "Yahoo Search"
           [msn]:    http://search.msn.com/    "MSN Search"

       Both of the above examples will produce the following HTML output:
         <p>I get 10 times more traffic from <a href="http://google.com/"
         title="Google">Google</a> than from
         <a href="http://search.yahoo.com/" title="Yahoo Search">Yahoo</a>
         or <a href="http://search.msn.com/" title="MSN Search">MSN</a>.</p>

       For comparison, here is the same paragraph written using
       Markdown's inline link style:
         I get 10 times more traffic from [Google](http://google.com/ "Google")
         than from [Yahoo](http://search.yahoo.com/ "Yahoo Search") or
         [MSN](http://search.msn.com/ "MSN Search").

       The point of reference-style links is not that they're easier to
       write. The point is that with reference-style links, your document
       source is vastly more readable. Compare the above examples: using
       reference-style links, the paragraph itself is only 81 characters
       long; with inline-style links, it's 176 characters; and as raw HTML,
       it's 234 characters. In the raw HTML, there's more markup than there
       is text.

       With Markdown's reference-style links, a source document much more
       closely resembles the final output, as rendered in a browser. By
       allowing you to move the markup-related metadata out of the paragraph,
       you can add links without interrupting the narrative flow of your
       prose.

   Emphasis
       Markdown treats asterisks (*) and underscores (_) as indicators of
       emphasis. Text wrapped with one * or _ will be wrapped with an
       HTML <em> tag; double *'s or _'s will be wrapped with an HTML
       <strong> tag. E.g., this input:
         *single asterisks*

         _single underscores_

         **double asterisks**

         __double underscores__

       will produce:
         <em>single asterisks</em>

         <em>single underscores</em>

         <strong>double asterisks</strong>

         <strong>double underscores</strong>

       You can use whichever style you prefer; the lone restriction is that
       the same character must be used to open and close an emphasis span.

       Emphasis can be used in the middle of a word:
         un*frigging*believable

       But if you surround an * or _ with spaces, it'll be treated as a
       literal asterisk or underscore.

       To produce a literal asterisk or underscore at a position where it
       would otherwise be used as an emphasis delimiter, you can backslash
       escape it:
         \*this text is surrounded by literal asterisks\*

   Code
       To indicate a span of code, wrap it with backtick quotes (`).
       Unlike a pre-formatted code block, a code span indicates code within a
       normal paragraph. For example:
         Use the `printf()` function.

       will produce:
         <p>Use the <code>printf()</code> function.</p>

       To include a literal backtick character within a code span, you can use
       multiple backticks as the opening and closing delimiters:
         ``There is a literal backtick (`) here.``

       which will produce this:
         <p><code>There is a literal backtick (`) here.</code></p>

       The backtick delimiters surrounding a code span may include spaces --
       one after the opening, one before the closing. This allows you to place
       literal backtick characters at the beginning or end of a code span:
         A single backtick in a code span: `` ` ``

         A backtick-delimited string in a code span: `` `foo` ``

       will produce:
         <p>A single backtick in a code span: <code>`</code></p>

         <p>A backtick-delimited string in a code span: <code>`foo`</code></p>

       With a code span, ampersands and angle brackets are encoded as HTML
       entities automatically, which makes it easy to include example HTML
       tags. Markdown will turn this:
         Please don't use any `<blink>` tags.

       into:
         <p>Please don't use any <code>&lt;blink&gt;</code> tags.</p>

       You can write this:
         `&#8212;` is the decimal-encoded equivalent of `&mdash;`.

       to produce:
         <p><code>&amp;#8212;</code> is the decimal-encoded
         equivalent of <code>&amp;mdash;</code>.</p>

   Images
       Admittedly, it's fairly difficult to devise a "natural" syntax for
       placing images into a plain text document format.

       Markdown uses an image syntax that is intended to resemble the syntax
       for links, allowing for two styles: inline and reference.

       Inline image syntax looks like this:
         ![Alt text](/path/to/img.jpg)

         ![Alt text](/path/to/img.jpg "Optional title")

       That is:

        • An exclamation mark: !;

        • followed by a set of square brackets, containing the alt
          attribute text for the image;

        • followed by a set of parentheses, containing the URL or path to
          the image, and an optional title attribute enclosed in double
          or single quotes.

       Reference-style image syntax looks like this:
         ![Alt text][id]

       Where "id" is the name of a defined image reference. Image references
       are defined using syntax identical to link references:
         [id]: url/to/image  "Optional title attribute"

       As of this writing, Markdown has no syntax for specifying the
       dimensions of an image; if this is important to you, you can simply
       use regular HTML <img> tags.

MISCELLANEOUS
   Automatic Links
       Markdown  supports  a shortcut style for creating "automatic" links for
       URLs and email addresses: simply surround the URL or email address with
       angle brackets. What this means is that if you want to show the  actual
       text  of  a URL or email address, and also have it be a clickable link,
       you can do this:
         <http://example.com/>

       Markdown will turn this into:
         <a href="http://example.com/">http://example.com/</a>

       Automatic links for email addresses work similarly, except that
       Markdown will also perform a bit of randomized decimal and hex
       entity-encoding to help obscure your address from address-harvesting
       spambots. For example, Markdown will turn this:
         <address@example.com>

       into something like this:
         <a href="&#x6D;&#x61;i&#x6C;&#x74;&#x6F;:&#x61;&#x64;&#x64;&#x72;&#x65;
         &#115;&#115;&#64;&#101;&#120;&#x61;&#109;&#x70;&#x6C;e&#x2E;&#99;&#111;
         &#109;">&#x61;&#x64;&#x64;&#x72;&#x65;&#115;&#115;&#64;&#101;&#120;&#x61;
         &#109;&#x70;&#x6C;e&#x2E;&#99;&#111;&#109;</a>

       which will render in a browser as a clickable  link  to  "address@exam‐
       ple.com.

       (This sort of entity-encoding trick will indeed fool many, if not
       most, address-harvesting bots, but it definitely won't fool all of
       them. It's better than nothing, but an address published in this way
       will probably eventually start receiving spam.)

   Backslash Escapes
       Markdown allows you to use backslash escapes to generate literal
       characters which would otherwise have special meaning in Markdown's
       formatting syntax. For example, if you wanted to surround a word
       with literal asterisks (instead of an HTML <em> tag), you can use
       backslashes before the asterisks, like this:
         \*literal asterisks\*

       Markdown provides backslash escapes for the following characters:
         \   backslash
         `   backtick
         *   asterisk
         _   underscore
         {}  curly braces
         []  square brackets
         ()  parentheses
         #   hash mark
         +   plus sign
         -   minus sign (hyphen)
         .   dot
         !   exclamation mark

AUTHOR
       Markdown was created by John Gruber.

       Manual page by Ryan Tomayko. It's pretty much a direct copy of the
       ]8;;http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax\Markdown Syntax Reference]8;;\,

       also by John Gruber.

SEE ALSO
       ronn(5)
       ]8;;http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/\Markdown Syntax Reference]8;;\

                                 January 1979                      MARKDOWN(5)