Formatting as it applies in this context is the act of altering the defaults appearance, position and nature of text as provided by the Steemit website to that which is preferred.

We use Markdown to apply formatting on text. Formatting helps in making a post look attractive. There are situations where formatting makes our post more understandable.

Headings

For our post to convey it's message correctly, we need headings that are distinguishable from the body of the text.
To create a heading
Type the text with the # sigh in front of the text as shown in the example below.

Heading 6

Heading 5

Heading 4

Heading 3

Heading 2

Heading 1

Colour

To format the text colour as applied on the heading above, use this:

<div class ="phishy"> 
Applying Markdown Formatting
</div>

Applying Markdown Emphasis

You can make a text bold with HTML using: <b> word </b> but with Markdown it is a lot simpler.

To bold a text, type this: **bold text**
and you get = bold text

For Italics text, type this: * today*
and you get = today

To make a strikethrough, type this: ~~ text~~
and you get = text

Backslash and backticks

With Backslash Escape you can prevents Markdown from interpreting some characters as an instruction, so it presents it as the character itself.
To do that use a backslash \
And that is how I make sure some of this codes are visible to you.
Some times I make use of backticks and place the characters inside it.

```
<div class="alert alert-block alert-info">
<b>Tip:</b> Use blue boxes (alert-info) for tips and notes.</div>

```

Formatting tables

To create a Markdown table use pipes and hyphens as shown below.

|S/N|Community|Status|
|---:|---|---|
|1|SteemWomen|Active|
|2|SteemKids|Guest|
|3|SteemAlive|Reporter|
|4|SteemInfinite|Guest|

This is the table it creates.

The text in the serial number column is align to the right using the colon inserted in the second row.

S/N	Community	Status
1	SteemWomen	Active
2	SteemKids	Guest
3	SteemAlive	Reporter
4	SteemInfinite	Guest

  <div class="text-justify"> 

        Body is typed here

  </div>

<center>
# Applying Markdown Formatting #
 </center>