4 date: 2018-04-04T18:29:00-07:00
5 tags: ["org", "emacs", "hugo", "markdown"]
6 categories: ["blogging"]
8 caption: "Exporting to Hugo's Blackfriday Markdown from Orgmode"
9 header: "/img/emacs-logo.png"
12 {{< figure src="/img/ox-hugo.png" class="center" >}}
14 ox-hugo is an [Emacs](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emacs) package providing a Hugo backend for the [org-mode](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/org-mode)
15 exporter. Today I integrated its expectations about file structure into the
16 Speedy theme for this blog, allowing me to keep all blog contents in a single
17 org-mode file which exports content to [markdown](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/markdown) format for Hugo's excellent
18 [blackfriday markdown parser](https://github.com/russross/blackfriday) (a markdown format with added features useful for
19 blogs). Hugo does support limited parsing of org files internally, but the org
20 file format is only a piece of what org-mode is all about. A full org
21 integration is beyond the scope of most external tools, so org-mode is generally
22 best used as an exporter. As an Emacs user, this allows me to instantly capture
23 interesting information I come across and publish it within seconds.
28 # Using ox-hugo {#using-ox-hugo}
30 This is where I will explain how to use ox-hugo
32 Blackfriday Markdown: Syntax
35 <ul id="ProjectSubmenu">
36 <li><a href="/projects/markdown/" title="Markdown Project Page">Main</a></li>
37 <li><a href="/projects/markdown/basics" title="Markdown Basics">Basics</a></li>
38 <li><a class="selected" title="Markdown Syntax Documentation">Syntax</a></li>
39 <li><a href="/projects/markdown/license" title="Pricing and License Information">License</a></li>
40 <li><a href="/projects/markdown/dingus" title="Online Markdown Web Form">Dingus</a></li>
44 * [Overview](#overview)
45 * [Philosophy](#philosophy)
46 * [Inline HTML](#html)
47 * [Automatic Escaping for Special Characters](#autoescape)
48 * [Block Elements](#block)
49 * [Paragraphs and Line Breaks](#p)
51 * [Blockquotes](#blockquote)
53 * [Code Blocks](#precode)
54 * [Horizontal Rules](#hr)
55 * [Span Elements](#span)
60 * [Miscellaneous](#misc)
61 * [Backslash Escapes](#backslash)
62 * [Automatic Links](#autolink)
65 **Note:** This document is itself written using Markdown; you
66 can [see the source for it by adding '.text' to the URL][src].
68 [src]: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/russross/blackfriday/master/testdata/Markdown%20Documentation%20-%20Syntax.text
72 <h2 id="overview">Overview</h2>
74 <h3 id="philosophy">Philosophy</h3>
76 Markdown is intended to be as easy-to-read and easy-to-write as is feasible.
78 Readability, however, is emphasized above all else. A Markdown-formatted
79 document should be publishable as-is, as plain text, without looking
80 like it's been marked up with tags or formatting instructions. While
81 Markdown's syntax has been influenced by several existing text-to-HTML
82 filters -- including [Setext] [1], [atx] [2], [Textile] [3], [reStructuredText] [4],
83 [Grutatext] [5], and [EtText] [6] -- the single biggest source of
84 inspiration for Markdown's syntax is the format of plain text email.
86 [1]: http://docutils.sourceforge.net/mirror/setext.html
87 [2]: http://www.aaronsw.com/2002/atx/
88 [3]: http://textism.com/tools/textile/
89 [4]: http://docutils.sourceforge.net/rst.html
90 [5]: http://www.triptico.com/software/grutatxt.html
91 [6]: http://ettext.taint.org/doc/
93 To this end, Markdown's syntax is comprised entirely of punctuation
94 characters, which punctuation characters have been carefully chosen so
95 as to look like what they mean. E.g., asterisks around a word actually
96 look like \*emphasis\*. Markdown lists look like, well, lists. Even
97 blockquotes look like quoted passages of text, assuming you've ever
102 <h3 id="html">Inline HTML</h3>
104 Markdown's syntax is intended for one purpose: to be used as a
105 format for *writing* for the web.
107 Markdown is not a replacement for HTML, or even close to it. Its
108 syntax is very small, corresponding only to a very small subset of
109 HTML tags. The idea is *not* to create a syntax that makes it easier
110 to insert HTML tags. In my opinion, HTML tags are already easy to
111 insert. The idea for Markdown is to make it easy to read, write, and
112 edit prose. HTML is a *publishing* format; Markdown is a *writing*
113 format. Thus, Markdown's formatting syntax only addresses issues that
114 can be conveyed in plain text.
116 For any markup that is not covered by Markdown's syntax, you simply
117 use HTML itself. There's no need to preface it or delimit it to
118 indicate that you're switching from Markdown to HTML; you just use
121 The only restrictions are that block-level HTML elements -- e.g. `<div>`,
122 `<table>`, `<pre>`, `<p>`, etc. -- must be separated from surrounding
123 content by blank lines, and the start and end tags of the block should
124 not be indented with tabs or spaces. Markdown is smart enough not
125 to add extra (unwanted) `<p>` tags around HTML block-level tags.
127 For example, to add an HTML table to a Markdown article:
129 This is a regular paragraph.
137 This is another regular paragraph.
139 Note that Markdown formatting syntax is not processed within block-level
140 HTML tags. E.g., you can't use Markdown-style `*emphasis*` inside an
143 Span-level HTML tags -- e.g. `<span>`, `<cite>`, or `<del>` -- can be
144 used anywhere in a Markdown paragraph, list item, or header. If you
145 want, you can even use HTML tags instead of Markdown formatting; e.g. if
146 you'd prefer to use HTML `<a>` or `<img>` tags instead of Markdown's
147 link or image syntax, go right ahead.
149 Unlike block-level HTML tags, Markdown syntax *is* processed within
153 <h3 id="autoescape">Automatic Escaping for Special Characters</h3>
155 In HTML, there are two characters that demand special treatment: `<`
156 and `&`. Left angle brackets are used to start tags; ampersands are
157 used to denote HTML entities. If you want to use them as literal
158 characters, you must escape them as entities, e.g. `<`, and
161 Ampersands in particular are bedeviling for web writers. If you want to
162 write about 'AT&T', you need to write '`AT&T`'. You even need to
163 escape ampersands within URLs. Thus, if you want to link to:
165 http://images.google.com/images?num=30&q=larry+bird
167 you need to encode the URL as:
169 http://images.google.com/images?num=30&q=larry+bird
171 in your anchor tag `href` attribute. Needless to say, this is easy to
172 forget, and is probably the single most common source of HTML validation
173 errors in otherwise well-marked-up web sites.
175 Markdown allows you to use these characters naturally, taking care of
176 all the necessary escaping for you. If you use an ampersand as part of
177 an HTML entity, it remains unchanged; otherwise it will be translated
180 So, if you want to include a copyright symbol in your article, you can write:
184 and Markdown will leave it alone. But if you write:
188 Markdown will translate it to:
192 Similarly, because Markdown supports [inline HTML](#html), if you use
193 angle brackets as delimiters for HTML tags, Markdown will treat them as
194 such. But if you write:
198 Markdown will translate it to:
202 However, inside Markdown code spans and blocks, angle brackets and
203 ampersands are *always* encoded automatically. This makes it easy to use
204 Markdown to write about HTML code. (As opposed to raw HTML, which is a
205 terrible format for writing about HTML syntax, because every single `<`
206 and `&` in your example code needs to be escaped.)
212 <h2 id="block">Block Elements</h2>
215 <h3 id="p">Paragraphs and Line Breaks</h3>
217 A paragraph is simply one or more consecutive lines of text, separated
218 by one or more blank lines. (A blank line is any line that looks like a
219 blank line -- a line containing nothing but spaces or tabs is considered
220 blank.) Normal paragraphs should not be intended with spaces or tabs.
222 The implication of the "one or more consecutive lines of text" rule is
223 that Markdown supports "hard-wrapped" text paragraphs. This differs
224 significantly from most other text-to-HTML formatters (including Movable
225 Type's "Convert Line Breaks" option) which translate every line break
226 character in a paragraph into a `<br />` tag.
228 When you *do* want to insert a `<br />` break tag using Markdown, you
229 end a line with two or more spaces, then type return.
231 Yes, this takes a tad more effort to create a `<br />`, but a simplistic
232 "every line break is a `<br />`" rule wouldn't work for Markdown.
233 Markdown's email-style [blockquoting][bq] and multi-paragraph [list items][l]
234 work best -- and look better -- when you format them with hard breaks.
241 <h3 id="header">Headers</h3>
243 Markdown supports two styles of headers, [Setext] [1] and [atx] [2].
245 Setext-style headers are "underlined" using equal signs (for first-level
246 headers) and dashes (for second-level headers). For example:
254 Any number of underlining `=`'s or `-`'s will work.
256 Atx-style headers use 1-6 hash characters at the start of the line,
257 corresponding to header levels 1-6. For example:
265 Optionally, you may "close" atx-style headers. This is purely
266 cosmetic -- you can use this if you think it looks better. The
267 closing hashes don't even need to match the number of hashes
268 used to open the header. (The number of opening hashes
269 determines the header level.) :
275 ### This is an H3 ######
278 <h3 id="blockquote">Blockquotes</h3>
280 Markdown uses email-style `>` characters for blockquoting. If you're
281 familiar with quoting passages of text in an email message, then you
282 know how to create a blockquote in Markdown. It looks best if you hard
283 wrap the text and put a `>` before every line:
285 > This is a blockquote with two paragraphs. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet,
286 > consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aliquam hendrerit mi posuere lectus.
287 > Vestibulum enim wisi, viverra nec, fringilla in, laoreet vitae, risus.
289 > Donec sit amet nisl. Aliquam semper ipsum sit amet velit. Suspendisse
290 > id sem consectetuer libero luctus adipiscing.
292 Markdown allows you to be lazy and only put the `>` before the first
293 line of a hard-wrapped paragraph:
295 > This is a blockquote with two paragraphs. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet,
296 consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aliquam hendrerit mi posuere lectus.
297 Vestibulum enim wisi, viverra nec, fringilla in, laoreet vitae, risus.
299 > Donec sit amet nisl. Aliquam semper ipsum sit amet velit. Suspendisse
300 id sem consectetuer libero luctus adipiscing.
302 Blockquotes can be nested (i.e. a blockquote-in-a-blockquote) by
303 adding additional levels of `>`:
305 > This is the first level of quoting.
307 > > This is nested blockquote.
309 > Back to the first level.
311 Blockquotes can contain other Markdown elements, including headers, lists,
314 > ## This is a header.
316 > 1. This is the first list item.
317 > 2. This is the second list item.
319 > Here's some example code:
321 > return shell_exec("echo $input | $markdown_script");
323 Any decent text editor should make email-style quoting easy. For
324 example, with BBEdit, you can make a selection and choose Increase
325 Quote Level from the Text menu.
328 <h3 id="list">Lists</h3>
330 Markdown supports ordered (numbered) and unordered (bulleted) lists.
332 Unordered lists use asterisks, pluses, and hyphens -- interchangably
351 Ordered lists use numbers followed by periods:
357 It's important to note that the actual numbers you use to mark the
358 list have no effect on the HTML output Markdown produces. The HTML
359 Markdown produces from the above list is:
367 If you instead wrote the list in Markdown like this:
379 you'd get the exact same HTML output. The point is, if you want to,
380 you can use ordinal numbers in your ordered Markdown lists, so that
381 the numbers in your source match the numbers in your published HTML.
382 But if you want to be lazy, you don't have to.
384 If you do use lazy list numbering, however, you should still start the
385 list with the number 1. At some point in the future, Markdown may support
386 starting ordered lists at an arbitrary number.
388 List markers typically start at the left margin, but may be indented by
389 up to three spaces. List markers must be followed by one or more spaces
392 To make lists look nice, you can wrap items with hanging indents:
394 * Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit.
395 Aliquam hendrerit mi posuere lectus. Vestibulum enim wisi,
396 viverra nec, fringilla in, laoreet vitae, risus.
397 * Donec sit amet nisl. Aliquam semper ipsum sit amet velit.
398 Suspendisse id sem consectetuer libero luctus adipiscing.
400 But if you want to be lazy, you don't have to:
402 * Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit.
403 Aliquam hendrerit mi posuere lectus. Vestibulum enim wisi,
404 viverra nec, fringilla in, laoreet vitae, risus.
405 * Donec sit amet nisl. Aliquam semper ipsum sit amet velit.
406 Suspendisse id sem consectetuer libero luctus adipiscing.
408 If list items are separated by blank lines, Markdown will wrap the
409 items in `<p>` tags in the HTML output. For example, this input:
431 <li><p>Magic</p></li>
434 List items may consist of multiple paragraphs. Each subsequent
435 paragraph in a list item must be intended by either 4 spaces
438 1. This is a list item with two paragraphs. Lorem ipsum dolor
439 sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aliquam hendrerit
442 Vestibulum enim wisi, viverra nec, fringilla in, laoreet
443 vitae, risus. Donec sit amet nisl. Aliquam semper ipsum
446 2. Suspendisse id sem consectetuer libero luctus adipiscing.
448 It looks nice if you indent every line of the subsequent
449 paragraphs, but here again, Markdown will allow you to be
452 * This is a list item with two paragraphs.
454 This is the second paragraph in the list item. You're
455 only required to indent the first line. Lorem ipsum dolor
456 sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit.
458 * Another item in the same list.
460 To put a blockquote within a list item, the blockquote's `>`
461 delimiters need to be indented:
463 * A list item with a blockquote:
465 > This is a blockquote
466 > inside a list item.
468 To put a code block within a list item, the code block needs
469 to be indented *twice* -- 8 spaces or two tabs:
471 * A list item with a code block:
476 It's worth noting that it's possible to trigger an ordered list by
477 accident, by writing something like this:
479 1986. What a great season.
481 In other words, a *number-period-space* sequence at the beginning of a
482 line. To avoid this, you can backslash-escape the period:
484 1986\. What a great season.
488 <h3 id="precode">Code Blocks</h3>
490 Pre-formatted code blocks are used for writing about programming or
491 markup source code. Rather than forming normal paragraphs, the lines
492 of a code block are interpreted literally. Markdown wraps a code block
493 in both `<pre>` and `<code>` tags.
495 To produce a code block in Markdown, simply indent every line of the
496 block by at least 4 spaces or 1 tab. For example, given this input:
498 This is a normal paragraph:
500 This is a code block.
502 Markdown will generate:
504 <p>This is a normal paragraph:</p>
506 <pre><code>This is a code block.
509 One level of indentation -- 4 spaces or 1 tab -- is removed from each
510 line of the code block. For example, this:
512 Here is an example of AppleScript:
514 tell application "Foo"
520 <p>Here is an example of AppleScript:</p>
522 <pre><code>tell application "Foo"
527 A code block continues until it reaches a line that is not indented
528 (or the end of the article).
530 Within a code block, ampersands (`&`) and angle brackets (`<` and `>`)
531 are automatically converted into HTML entities. This makes it very
532 easy to include example HTML source code using Markdown -- just paste
533 it and indent it, and Markdown will handle the hassle of encoding the
534 ampersands and angle brackets. For example, this:
537 © 2004 Foo Corporation
542 <pre><code><div class="footer">
543 &copy; 2004 Foo Corporation
547 Regular Markdown syntax is not processed within code blocks. E.g.,
548 asterisks are just literal asterisks within a code block. This means
549 it's also easy to use Markdown to write about Markdown's own syntax.
553 <h3 id="hr">Horizontal Rules</h3>
555 You can produce a horizontal rule tag (`<hr />`) by placing three or
556 more hyphens, asterisks, or underscores on a line by themselves. If you
557 wish, you may use spaces between the hyphens or asterisks. Each of the
558 following lines will produce a horizontal rule:
568 ---------------------------------------
575 <h2 id="span">Span Elements</h2>
577 <h3 id="link">Links</h3>
579 Markdown supports two style of links: *inline* and *reference*.
581 In both styles, the link text is delimited by [square brackets].
583 To create an inline link, use a set of regular parentheses immediately
584 after the link text's closing square bracket. Inside the parentheses,
585 put the URL where you want the link to point, along with an *optional*
586 title for the link, surrounded in quotes. For example:
588 This is [an example](http://example.com/ "Title") inline link.
590 [This link](http://example.net/) has no title attribute.
594 <p>This is <a href="http://example.com/" title="Title">
595 an example</a> inline link.</p>
597 <p><a href="http://example.net/">This link</a> has no
600 If you're referring to a local resource on the same server, you can
603 See my [About](/about/) page for details.
605 Reference-style links use a second set of square brackets, inside
606 which you place a label of your choosing to identify the link:
608 This is [an example][id] reference-style link.
610 You can optionally use a space to separate the sets of brackets:
612 This is [an example] [id] reference-style link.
614 Then, anywhere in the document, you define your link label like this,
617 [id]: http://example.com/ "Optional Title Here"
621 * Square brackets containing the link identifier (optionally
622 indented from the left margin using up to three spaces);
623 * followed by a colon;
624 * followed by one or more spaces (or tabs);
625 * followed by the URL for the link;
626 * optionally followed by a title attribute for the link, enclosed
627 in double or single quotes.
629 The link URL may, optionally, be surrounded by angle brackets:
631 [id]: <http://example.com/> "Optional Title Here"
633 You can put the title attribute on the next line and use extra spaces
634 or tabs for padding, which tends to look better with longer URLs:
636 [id]: http://example.com/longish/path/to/resource/here
637 "Optional Title Here"
639 Link definitions are only used for creating links during Markdown
640 processing, and are stripped from your document in the HTML output.
642 Link definition names may constist of letters, numbers, spaces, and punctuation -- but they are *not* case sensitive. E.g. these two links:
649 The *implicit link name* shortcut allows you to omit the name of the
650 link, in which case the link text itself is used as the name.
651 Just use an empty set of square brackets -- e.g., to link the word
652 "Google" to the google.com web site, you could simply write:
656 And then define the link:
658 [Google]: http://google.com/
660 Because link names may contain spaces, this shortcut even works for
661 multiple words in the link text:
663 Visit [Daring Fireball][] for more information.
665 And then define the link:
667 [Daring Fireball]: http://daringfireball.net/
669 Link definitions can be placed anywhere in your Markdown document. I
670 tend to put them immediately after each paragraph in which they're
671 used, but if you want, you can put them all at the end of your
672 document, sort of like footnotes.
674 Here's an example of reference links in action:
676 I get 10 times more traffic from [Google] [1] than from
677 [Yahoo] [2] or [MSN] [3].
679 [1]: http://google.com/ "Google"
680 [2]: http://search.yahoo.com/ "Yahoo Search"
681 [3]: http://search.msn.com/ "MSN Search"
683 Using the implicit link name shortcut, you could instead write:
685 I get 10 times more traffic from [Google][] than from
686 [Yahoo][] or [MSN][].
688 [google]: http://google.com/ "Google"
689 [yahoo]: http://search.yahoo.com/ "Yahoo Search"
690 [msn]: http://search.msn.com/ "MSN Search"
692 Both of the above examples will produce the following HTML output:
694 <p>I get 10 times more traffic from <a href="http://google.com/"
695 title="Google">Google</a> than from
696 <a href="http://search.yahoo.com/" title="Yahoo Search">Yahoo</a>
697 or <a href="http://search.msn.com/" title="MSN Search">MSN</a>.</p>
699 For comparison, here is the same paragraph written using
700 Markdown's inline link style:
702 I get 10 times more traffic from [Google](http://google.com/ "Google")
703 than from [Yahoo](http://search.yahoo.com/ "Yahoo Search") or
704 [MSN](http://search.msn.com/ "MSN Search").
706 The point of reference-style links is not that they're easier to
707 write. The point is that with reference-style links, your document
708 source is vastly more readable. Compare the above examples: using
709 reference-style links, the paragraph itself is only 81 characters
710 long; with inline-style links, it's 176 characters; and as raw HTML,
711 it's 234 characters. In the raw HTML, there's more markup than there
714 With Markdown's reference-style links, a source document much more
715 closely resembles the final output, as rendered in a browser. By
716 allowing you to move the markup-related metadata out of the paragraph,
717 you can add links without interrupting the narrative flow of your
721 <h3 id="em">Emphasis</h3>
723 Markdown treats asterisks (`*`) and underscores (`_`) as indicators of
724 emphasis. Text wrapped with one `*` or `_` will be wrapped with an
725 HTML `<em>` tag; double `*`'s or `_`'s will be wrapped with an HTML
726 `<strong>` tag. E.g., this input:
734 __double underscores__
738 <em>single asterisks</em>
740 <em>single underscores</em>
742 <strong>double asterisks</strong>
744 <strong>double underscores</strong>
746 You can use whichever style you prefer; the lone restriction is that
747 the same character must be used to open and close an emphasis span.
749 Emphasis can be used in the middle of a word:
751 un*fucking*believable
753 But if you surround an `*` or `_` with spaces, it'll be treated as a
754 literal asterisk or underscore.
756 To produce a literal asterisk or underscore at a position where it
757 would otherwise be used as an emphasis delimiter, you can backslash
760 \*this text is surrounded by literal asterisks\*
764 <h3 id="code">Code</h3>
766 To indicate a span of code, wrap it with backtick quotes (`` ` ``).
767 Unlike a pre-formatted code block, a code span indicates code within a
768 normal paragraph. For example:
770 Use the `printf()` function.
774 <p>Use the <code>printf()</code> function.</p>
776 To include a literal backtick character within a code span, you can use
777 multiple backticks as the opening and closing delimiters:
779 ``There is a literal backtick (`) here.``
781 which will produce this:
783 <p><code>There is a literal backtick (`) here.</code></p>
785 The backtick delimiters surrounding a code span may include spaces --
786 one after the opening, one before the closing. This allows you to place
787 literal backtick characters at the beginning or end of a code span:
789 A single backtick in a code span: `` ` ``
791 A backtick-delimited string in a code span: `` `foo` ``
795 <p>A single backtick in a code span: <code>`</code></p>
797 <p>A backtick-delimited string in a code span: <code>`foo`</code></p>
799 With a code span, ampersands and angle brackets are encoded as HTML
800 entities automatically, which makes it easy to include example HTML
801 tags. Markdown will turn this:
803 Please don't use any `<blink>` tags.
807 <p>Please don't use any <code><blink></code> tags.</p>
811 `—` is the decimal-encoded equivalent of `—`.
815 <p><code>&#8212;</code> is the decimal-encoded
816 equivalent of <code>&mdash;</code>.</p>
820 <h3 id="img">Images</h3>
822 Admittedly, it's fairly difficult to devise a "natural" syntax for
823 placing images into a plain text document format.
825 Markdown uses an image syntax that is intended to resemble the syntax
826 for links, allowing for two styles: *inline* and *reference*.
828 Inline image syntax looks like this:
830 ![Alt text](/path/to/img.jpg)
832 ![Alt text](/path/to/img.jpg "Optional title")
836 * An exclamation mark: `!`;
837 * followed by a set of square brackets, containing the `alt`
838 attribute text for the image;
839 * followed by a set of parentheses, containing the URL or path to
840 the image, and an optional `title` attribute enclosed in double
843 Reference-style image syntax looks like this:
847 Where "id" is the name of a defined image reference. Image references
848 are defined using syntax identical to link references:
850 [id]: url/to/image "Optional title attribute"
852 As of this writing, Markdown has no syntax for specifying the
853 dimensions of an image; if this is important to you, you can simply
854 use regular HTML `<img>` tags.
860 <h2 id="misc">Miscellaneous</h2>
862 <h3 id="autolink">Automatic Links</h3>
864 Markdown supports a shortcut style for creating "automatic" links for URLs and email addresses: simply surround the URL or email address with angle brackets. What this means is that if you want to show the actual text of a URL or email address, and also have it be a clickable link, you can do this:
866 <http://example.com/>
868 Markdown will turn this into:
870 <a href="http://example.com/">http://example.com/</a>
872 Automatic links for email addresses work similarly, except that
873 Markdown will also perform a bit of randomized decimal and hex
874 entity-encoding to help obscure your address from address-harvesting
875 spambots. For example, Markdown will turn this:
877 <address@example.com>
879 into something like this:
881 <a href="mailto:addre
882 ss@example.co
883 m">address@exa
884 mple.com</a>
886 which will render in a browser as a clickable link to "address@example.com".
888 (This sort of entity-encoding trick will indeed fool many, if not
889 most, address-harvesting bots, but it definitely won't fool all of
890 them. It's better than nothing, but an address published in this way
891 will probably eventually start receiving spam.)
895 <h3 id="backslash">Backslash Escapes</h3>
897 Markdown allows you to use backslash escapes to generate literal
898 characters which would otherwise have special meaning in Markdown's
899 formatting syntax. For example, if you wanted to surround a word with
900 literal asterisks (instead of an HTML `<em>` tag), you can backslashes
901 before the asterisks, like this:
903 \*literal asterisks\*
905 Markdown provides backslash escapes for the following characters:
916 - minus sign (hyphen)