Blog posts in Ghost are written using Markdown. Markdown is a minimal syntax for marking up your documents with formatting, using punctuation and special characters. For those new to Markdown, this guide will help you become familiar with the full list of shortcuts and a few of our own additions. Ghost’s version of markdown is a combination of standard Markdown, GitHub Flavored Markdown, and other useful features like footnotes.

Markdown Help

The most common formatting options have keyboard shortcuts to make them easier to add:

Headers

Headers are set using a hash before the title. The number of hashes before the title text will determine the depth of the header. Header depths are from 1-6

• H1 : # Header 1
• H2 : ## Header 2
• H3 : ### Header 3
• H4 : #### Header 4
• H5 : ##### Header 5
• H6 : ###### Header 6

Text Styling

• Links : [Title](URL)
• Bold : **Bold**
• Italicize : *Italics*
• Strike-through : ~~text~~
• Highlight : ==text==
• Paragraphs : Line space between paragraphs
• Line break : Add two spaces to the end of the line
• Lists : * an asterisk for every new list item.
• Quotes : > Quote
• Inline Code : `alert('Hello World');`
• Horizontal Rule (HR) : --------

Images

To insert an image into your post, you need to first type ![]() into the Markdown editor panel. This will create an image upload box in your preview panel.

You can drag and drop images (.png, .gif, .jpg) from your Desktop over the image upload box to include it into your post, or alternatively click the image upload box to use a standard image upload popup. If you prefer to include an image url, click the “link” icon in the bottom left corner of the image upload box, this will then present you with the ability to insert an image URL.

To title your image, all you need to do is place the title text inbetween the square brackets, e.g; ![This is a title]().

Be sure read How to Add an Image to Your Post for a full instruction on image handling with your Ghost blog.

Footnotes

Footnotes can be added to the body of your text using placeholders like this: [^1]. Alternatively you can use ‘n’ rather than numbers [^n] so you don’t have to worry about which number you are on. At the very end of your post, you can define your matching footnotes as shown below, URLs will be turned into links:

[^1]: This is my first footnote
[^n]: Visit http://ghost.org
[^n]: A final footnote

Writing Code

Inline code can be added using single back-ticks E.g. `alert('Hello World')`.

For code blocks, Ghost supports both standard markdown code blocks and the syntax from GitHub Flavored Markdown (GFM). Standard markdown works by indenting code lines with 4 spaces:

    <header>
        <h1>{{title}}</h1>
    </header>

GFM uses triple back-ticks ```

```
<header>
    <h1>{{title}}</h1>
</header>
```

Examples

Link Markdown Example

This is a paragraph that contains a [link to ghost](http://ghost.org).

List Markdown Example

This paragraph contains a list of items.

* Item 1
* Item 2
* Item three

Quote Markdown Example

This paragraph has a quote

> That is pulled out like this

from the text my post.