For Dummies is an extensive series of instructional/reference books which are intended to present non-intimidating guides for readers new to the various topics covered. The series has been a worldwide success with editions in numerous languages.

So that’s why this is...

Due to the large number of new users registering on Steemit, I decided to write something about the simplest way to create posts - using Markdown. This way author’s content will be presented much better. I will not bore you too much - Markdown is a lightweight markup language with plain text formatting syntax. And this is all you need to know.

Most important

In the very beginning, I have two important things to point out.

Firstly - Markdown used on Steemit is a little different from the standard Markdown. Some things do not work properly, others work differently. In this text I will focus only on the instructions for writing on Steemit.

Secondly - at any time during creating a post you can view the final version under the edit window. If something is wrong at the time of writing, it will not improve in the final version after publication.

Paragraphs

Let's start with the basics and the simplest thing: the text itself.

The first rule states: if you want a new paragraph, press “enter” two times. It will create a gap between the two texts, which greatly influences readability.

This is first paragraph.

This is second paragraph after double “enter”.

Bold and italics

It’s time for italic, bold and mixing them.

Creating both is based on the same principle - when you want to change the text to italic or bold, use the asterisk "*" or understrike "_" at the beginning and the end of the phrase. We use a single character for italics and two characters for bold. Example:

*This will be written in italics.* _This will be also written in italics._

And the effect:

This will be written in italics. This will be also written in italics.

Another example:

**This will be bold.** __This will be also bold.__

And the effect again:

This will be bold. This will be also bold.

All above can be connected in really simple way:

_This **text** is_ mixed __*up*__.

This complicated sentence will look like:

This text is mixed up.

Links

Very often we want to place a link to another page, article or place on the internet. The easiest way is to simply paste the link and Steemit will create link from it:

https://steemit.com/@lukmarcus

Will be changed into:

https://steemit.com/@lukmarcus

In many cases, however, we do not want to insert the whole link, especially when it’s long and unreadable. To do this, we need to use a simple construction:

[some text](link to some text)

To show you on example::

[My Steemit profile](https://steemit.com/@lukmarcus)

Will be shown in text like:

My Steemit profile

It is also worth mentioning that Steemit itself creates links to other profiles when "@" is added before the username. This way, when you mention someone in the text, you can easily make a link:

@lukmarcus

Will create:

@lukmarcus

Images

With this thing Steemit really meets us half-way. You don’t even have to try to add graphics to the text. If you want an image to appear in your post, simply paste its address without any additional characters:

http://i.imgur.com/wmHs3WE.jpg

And we see:

Images even easier

If you want to add some graphics to your post and you have them on your computer, it's even simpler. Simply drag the file and drop it into the editing window - Steemit will upload this image and create link for us!

Movies

The situation is very similar with video files. If you want to show a video from YouTube or Vimeo in your post, simply paste the link for it:

https://youtu.be/OzG2EWP1KV4

And we can watch it as:

As you can see, there’s nothing hard in all of that.

Headers

Sometimes paragraphs are not enough to make a readable text. It’s a good idea to use headers, especially when the post is longer or the text will be divided into several parts (like what you are reading right now). This time we’re going to use hash character "#". We only put hashes before the header text, and their amount expresses the size / importance of the text. We have the following options:

# Header 1
## Header 2
### Header 3
#### Header 4
##### Header 5
###### Header 6

And the effect:

Header 1

Header 2

Header 3

Header 4

Header 5

Header 6

And I won’t leave you without example:

'### Markdown is great
Why? You will find out everything soon, but first...
‘##### A little history
I’m joking, I won’t bore you.

In more readable way it will look like:

Markdown is great

Why? You will find out everything soon, but first...

A little history

I’m joking, I won’t bore you.

End of part 1

I hope in this post I showed simple rules of Markdown and from that moment more people will start using it. If you have any questions, feel free to write comments - I will try to answer them all.

If you like this text it will be much easier simply to follow me!