Markdown syntax cheat sheet

Quick reference

A complete .md file

Put those constructs together and you get something like this:

# Meeting notes

**Date:** 4 Nov 2026 · **Author:** Vy

## Decisions

1. Use Markdown for internal docs.
2. Every project gets a `README.md`.

## Action items

- [x] Share the draft
- [ ] Book next week's review

> Note: everything lives in the `docs/` folder.

The mistakes that break the formatting

Almost all Markdown trouble comes from three things: a missing blank line, a missing space, or a missing closing marker.

• No blank line between two paragraphs and Markdown joins them into one. This is the most common mistake and the hardest to spot, because the source looks fine.
• #Heading is not a heading. The # needs a space after it.
• One stray * italicises the rest of the document until the end of the file.
• A table without its separator row, such as | :--- | :--- |, collapses into a line of text full of pipes.
• A code block without its closing three backticks swallows everything below it.

When you want a special character to show up as itself instead of doing its job, put a backslash in front of it: \*not italic\*.

Try it

Paste any Markdown into MDFrame to see the formatted result. When you need to share it, press Ctrl + S to save a .docx or Ctrl + P to print a PDF.