Markdown Guide

iA Presenter uses Markdown syntax to format documents. Learn the basics of Markdown in minutes—or dive in to discover more complex formatting.

This guide is interactive. Every example is a small editor with its result beside it: change the Markdown and see what happens. What you say appears dimmed, what your audience sees on the slide appears bright. To put a line on the slide, start it with a tab, written ⇥. In the examples, the Tab key types one, and Escape leaves the example.

Overview

John Gruber, the author of Markdown, underlines that “Markdown is intended to be as easy-to-read and easy-to-write as is feasible.” Readability is key: a Markdown document should be “publishable as-is, as plain text.”¹

While it may be daunting to learn Markdown, you don’t have to type every character yourself: on Mac, the Text tab of the Inspector inserts the syntax for you; on iPhone and iPad, use the Command Palette. This makes it easy to pick up, and it will soon be second-nature.

Structure

Paragraphs

A paragraph is one or more lines of text separated by one or more blank lines.

First paragraph.

Second paragraph.

By default, iA Presenter keeps normal paragraphs as spoken text in your presentation. When you indent paragraphs in the Editor, they appear on your slides instead.

You say this.
⇥Your audience reads this.

In Presenter, a single return starts a new paragraph by default. You can change this with Single return starts a new paragraph in Markdown settings; when it’s off, Presenter follows standard Markdown, where paragraphs are separated by a blank line. Either way, a blank line between paragraphs creates a new visual block. We recommend separating paragraphs with a blank line so your text works the same in other Markdown apps. To insert a line break within a paragraph, write two spaces or a backslash \ at the end of the line.

Twinkle, Twinkle Little Bat\
How I wonder what you’re at!

Headings

# Heading 1
## Heading 2
### Heading 3
#### Heading 4
##### Heading 5
###### Heading 6

Lists

Unordered lists can use hyphens, pluses, and asterisks as list markers interchangeably:

- Red
+ Green
* Blue

Ordered lists use numbers followed by periods:

1. Red
2. Green
3. Blue

To make a task list, add a space or the letter x between square brackets after a list marker:

- [ ] Milk
- [x] Bread

To make nested lists, indent list items with a tab or at least four spaces:

- Groceries
    - [ ] Milk

To make a list item with more than one paragraph, indent additional paragraphs with a tab or four spaces. You can use extra spaces after a list marker to align the first paragraph with subsequent paragraphs:

-   First paragraph.

    Second paragraph.

-   First paragraph.

To make lists visible in the slide, prefix the items with a tab:

⇥- [ ] Milk
⇥- Green
⇥1. Red

Blockquotes

Blockquotes are spoken text without a tab prefix:

> First level, first paragraph.
>
> > Second level, first paragraph.
>
> First level, second paragraph.

To make block quotes visible to the audience, add a tab prefix:

⇥> First level, first paragraph.
⇥>
⇥> > Second level, first paragraph.
⇥>
⇥> First level, second paragraph.

Definition Lists

⇥Markdown
⇥: A lightweight markup language with plain text formatting syntax.
⇥: A deliberate reduction in the selling price of retail merchandise.

Horizontal Rules

To split slides, use horizontal rules.

# First slide
---
# Second slide

Formatting

Bold

Use double asterisks or underscores to make bold text. Edit the example: what happens when you remove one asterisk?

**bold**

__bold__

Italic

Use single asterisks or underscores to make italic text. Inside a word, only asterisks work. Try both on part of a word.

*italic*

_italic_

Strikethrough

Use double tildes to ~~strikethrough~~ text. Try crossing out a single word in a sentence.

~~strikethrough~~

Highlight

Use double equals signs to ==highlight== text. Try highlighting part of a sentence.

==highlight==

Superscript

Use a caret for simple superscript without any whitespace or punctuation:

100m^2

More complicated superscript:

y^(a+b)^

Subscript

Use a tilde for simple subscript without any whitespace or punctuation:

x~z

More complicated subscript:

x~y,z~

Links

Markdown supports inline and reference links:

This is an [inline link](https://example.com).

This is a [reference link][id].

[id]: https://example.com

You can omit a reference link identifier too:

[Google][]

[Google]: https://google.com

Notes

Footnotes

Markdown supports inline and reference footnotes:

This is an inline[^Footnote text.] footnote.

This is a reference[^id] footnote.

[^id]: Footnote text.

Footnotes are grouped at the end of a slide. They’ll only be visible if the layout allows for them.

Comments

Add two forward slashes at the beginning of a line to change it into a comment that only you can see:

This line stays in your presentation.
// This is a comment

Images

The easiest way to add an image is to drag it into the Editor, which inserts it as a Content Block (/image.png). iA Presenter also supports Markdown image syntax and HTML image tags:

![Engineering Flowchart](Flowchart.png)

When using local images, they must be first added to the Media Manager. This gives iA Presenter permission to use the file.

Tables

| Name | Price | Tax |
|:--|--:|--:|
| Widget | 10$ | 1$ |
| Gift | 0$ ||
[Recent Transactions]

• Enter at least one | per line
• Columns are separated with a |
• The separator between table header and content must contain only | : - and spaces
• To align a column: left :--, right --:, or center :-:
• Cell content must be in one line
• The first line of the table and the alignment/divider line must start at the beginning of the line
• To merge cells, add another | at the end of the cell

Code

Use single backticks to indicate code within a line:

Keyword `func` indicates a function in Swift programming language.

To create a fenced code block, put three or more backticks on a line before and after the code. You can add an optional code language after the opening backticks:

```swift
class Shape {
    var numberOfSides = 0
}
```

Indented code blocks are not supported.

Math

iA Presenter supports LaTeX math expressions, which are typeset using KaTeX (see their supported features to learn more). Place equations inside a paragraph using $…$ or \(…\):

An example of math within a paragraph $x+y^2$.

An example of math within a paragraph \(x+y^2\).

Equations can be placed on their own using $$…$$ or \[…\]:

$$\displaystyle \frac{1}{\Bigl(\sqrt{\phi \sqrt{5}}-\phi\Bigr) e^{\frac25 \pi}} = 1+\frac{e^{-2\pi}} {1+\frac{e^{-4\pi}} {1+\frac{e^{-6\pi}} {1+\frac{e^{-8\pi}} {1+\cdots} } } }$$

\[\displaystyle \frac{1}{\Bigl(\sqrt{\phi \sqrt{5}}-\phi\Bigr) e^{\frac25 \pi}} = 1+\frac{e^{-2\pi}} {1+\frac{e^{-4\pi}} {1+\frac{e^{-6\pi}} {1+\frac{e^{-8\pi}} {1+\cdots} } } }\]

If you use the dollar sign syntax, leave no space between the $ and the expression’s contents. Add a space on the outside.

Basics