Input Formats

RedPen supports three types of input formats (“Plain text”, “Wiki”, and “Markdown” format).

Plain text

Plain text supports a set of paragraphs. Paragraphs are separated by two new lines. For example, the following article has two paragraphs.

This is a first paragraph. This paragraph is the introduction of this article.
It introduces the central issue discussed throughout the rest of the article.

Second paragraph describes the details of the issue and attempts to present a solution.

Wiki format

RedPen supports a subset of Wiki syntax. Currently, the supported elements of Wiki syntax are as follows.

Headings

To create a heading, add a line starting with “h[1234]. ”. The number after h represents the level of the heading or section.

Inline Formatting

RedPen supports the following inline formatting.

Bold

**this is a Bold sentence.**

Italic

//this is an italic sentence.//

Unerline

__this is an underlined sentence.__

Strikethrough

--this is a strikethrough sentence.--

Lists

Wiki syntax supports two types of lists.

Bulleted Lists

To enter a bulleted list, start a line with an asterisk. The number of asterisks denotes the indent level of the list.

* List
* List
** Sub List

Numbered List

If you want to add numbered lists, use the hash/pound symbol (#) instead of the asterisk used by Bulleted Lists.

Comments

To add a comment to the wiki source, add a [!– ... –] block. The following shows a sample comment.

[!--
  This is a comment.
--]

Paragraphs

Paragraphs are separated by two new lines. This syntax is the same as for plain text.

Markdown

RedPen currently supports the following Markdown elements.

Headings

Two styles of headings are supported.

  • Underlined headings

First and second level headings can be specified using underlines.

First-level headings
====================
second-level headings
---------------------
  • Atx style headings

1-6 hash or pound characters (#) at the beginning of a line.

For example:

# First-level heading
## Second-level heading
### Third-level heading

Inline Formatting

RedPen supports the following inline formatting.

Bold

Wrap characters with double asterisks or underscores for bold. The following are samples of bold sentences.

**this is a Bold sentence.**
__this is also a Bold sentence.__

Italic

Wrap characters with a single asterisk or underscore for italics. The following are samples of italic sentences.

*this is a italic syntax.*
_this is also a italic syntax._

Links

To create a link, wrap square brackets around the link’s label and parentheses around the URL. For example.

[label](url)

Lists

The Markdown parser used by RedPen supports two types of lists - Bulleted lists and Numbered lists.

Bulleted Lists

To create a bulleted list, start a line with an asterisk or a hyphen. The lists are nested according to how many leading spaces there are. The following is a example of a bulleted list using asterisks.

* List
* List
  * Sub List
  * Sub List

Numbered List

If you want to create a numbered list, use a number followed by a period, as in the following example.

1. List
2. List

Paragraphs

Paragraphs are separated by two new lines. This syntax is the same as for plain text.