aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaBasic writing and formatting syntax
In this article
Headings
Styling text
Quoting text
Quoting code
Supported color models
Links
Section links
Relative links
Images
Lists
Task lists
Mentioning people and teams
Referencing issues and pull requests
Referencing external resources
Uploading assets
Using emoji
Paragraphs
Footnotes
Alerts
Hiding content with comments
Ignoring Markdown formatting
Disabling Markdown rendering
Further reading
Create sophisticated formatting for your prose and code on GitHub with simple syntax.

Headings
To create a heading, add one to six # symbols before your heading text. The number of # you use will determine the hierarchy level and typeface size of the heading.

A first-level heading

A second-level heading

A third-level heading

Screenshot of rendered GitHub Markdown showing sample h1, h2, and h3 headers, which descend in type size and visual weight to indicate descending hierarchy level.

When you use two or more headings, GitHub automatically generates a table of contents that you can access by clicking within the file header. Each heading title is listed in the table of contents and you can click a title to navigate to the selected section.

Screenshot of the README file in the GitHub Docs open source repository with the drop-down menu for the table of contents exposed. The table of contents icon is outlined in dark orange.

Styling text
You can indicate emphasis with bold, italic, strikethrough, subscript, or superscript text in comment fields and .md files.

Style Syntax Keyboard shortcut Example Output
Bold ** ** or __ __ Command+B (Mac) or Ctrl+B (Windows/Linux) This is bold text This is bold text
Italic * * or _ _ Command+I (Mac) or Ctrl+I (Windows/Linux) This text is italicized This text is italicized
Strikethrough ~~ ~~ None ~~This was mistaken text~~ This was mistaken text
Bold and nested italic ** ** and _ _ None This text is extremely important This text is extremely important
All bold and italic *** *** None All this text is important All this text is important
Subscript  None This is a _subscript text This is a subscript text
Superscript  None This is a ^superscript text This is a superscript text
Quoting text
You can quote text with a >.

Text that is not a quote

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