Emails That Look Good in Plain Text and Formatted
Parts of Markdown, such as boldface and italics, for instance, can be interpreted in any email program.
Emphasis
Italics: Enclose the italicized text with a single asterisk () or underline symbol (_). For example: italics This will appear italics. Boldface: Enclose the bolded text with two asterisks () or underline symbols (__). For example: bold This will appear as bold. Bold and italics: Enclose the text with three asterisks () or three underline symbols (___). For example: bold and italics This would be formatted as bold and italics.
Links
A web address: Enclose the URL with angle brackets, also known as greater than and less than symbols. For example:
This will appear as http://example.com.
Email address: Enclose the email address with angle brackets like you would with a URL. Example:
This is rendered as the clickable email link me@example.com.
Text link: Enclose the text for the link brackets, and immediately following the closing bracket, place the URL in parentheses:
This will appear as an example.
Quoted Text
Blockquote: Blockquoted text will be inset compared to the current message. This is often used when quoting text from previous emails. Start the quoted line with the greater than symbol (>):
This would appear in blockquote formatting (which may vary in appearance depending on the email client):
You can use multiple indentation characters (e.g., » or »») to increase the level of blockquote indentation.
Headlines
Headlines: For large headline text, use a hash symbol (#) followed by a space before the text to be a headline:
This would be formatted as an H1 size headline, which can vary some between email clients, but would be a large font and bold. Adding additional hash symbols will make the headline text a step smaller as H2, H3, and even H4 size. For example:
This would appear as an H3, third-tier headline.
Lists
Bulleted list: Precede each list item with an asterisk (*) or hyphen (-). For example:
This would be formatted like this:
ListItems
Ordered list: Precede each item with a number and period. For example:
This would be formatted as a numbered list:
ListItem
Paragraphs and Line Breaks
New paragraph: Simply separate paragraphs with an empty line. Example:
Line break: End a line with " " (two whitespace characters) to insert a line break.
Images
Inline image: Start with an exclamation point (!) followed by brackets ([ and ]) enclosing the text that describes the image, followed by the URL where the image is located. For example:
Horizontal Rule
Put three or more asterisks (***) in a paragraph of their own to create a horizontal line across the page. For example:
