Formatting Forum Posts (How to use Markdown/BB Code)

Clear presentation of your ideas matters. People will not read a wall of text. Five ideas buried in a long paragraph are as good as invisible.

Fortunately the forum software has some rudimentary formatting capabilities.

Text Formatting

Surround text with

  • one *asterisk* or _underscore_ for emphasized text
  • two **asterisks** or __underscores__ for strong text
  • <strike> and </strike> for strike through β€” useful when you edit a post but want to show what you changed.
  • <ins> and </ins> for inserted text
  • <del> and </del> for deleted text

Put a backslash \ before a character to disable parsing. For example use β€œ\*” to avoid having the asterisk start italics, as in:

  • without \: β€œI didn’t summon any 5s or 4s!”
  • with \: β€œI didn’t summon any 5*s or 4*s!”

Paragraph formatting

To achieve an effect, start a line with

  • header 1: #
  • header 2: ##
  • header 3: ### (etc. down to header 6)
  • list bullet: * or -
  • list number: 1. (The software automatically increments numbers in a list.)

Tables

Use a vertical bar (β€œ|”) at the start of a line and to separate columns, e.g. |Cell1|Cell2|Cell3|
Start each new row on a new line.
Second row MUST have three hyphens (β€œβ€”β€œ) as the contents of each cell, e.g. |β€”|β€”|β€”| . These are hard to type on some platforms because the software may autocorrect two hyphens into an em-dash (β€œβ€”β€œ).

Class Skill Description
Barbarian Wound 6%chance to apply bleeding from any normal attack. The effect deals 60% of the damage done and lasts for 5 turns. This effect stacks
Ranger Pierce 5% chance to bypass defensive buffs when attacking. This includes counter attacks
42 Likes

Excellent post, thank you @Kerridoc!

The forum software supports Markdown formatting for posts, you can see all the available options here: Markdown Reference

12 Likes

Showing commands

You can show commands by using ` at the beginning and end of a line. Or by highlighting a line then using </> button on the forum edit menu.

You must do this for every line you wish to format this way.

Formating

Strike

<strike>example</strike> = example

Bold

**example** = example

Italics

_example_ = example

Quote

> example =

example

Hidden

[details="Summary"] This text will be hidden [/details] =

Summary

This text will be hidden

Blurred

[spoiler]This text will be blurred[/spoiler] = This text will be blurred

Hidden & Blurred

[details="Summary"]
[spoiler]This text will be hidden & blurred[/spoiler]
[/details] =

Summary

This text will be hidden & blurred

14 Likes

test test > test #testing test

1 Like

If # is used within a line, it creates a hash-tag link to a forum category or subjecttag, e,g. #forum-rules or #challenge_events

4 Likes

Headers

More # reduces the size of the header

# One
One
### Three
Three

=

One

One

Three

Three

Edit: Spaces and asterisks

5*s= 5s
So add a space after asterisk

5* s= 5* s
To prevent formatting

Edit: Tables

|Class|Skill|Description|
|---|---|---|
|Barbarian|Wound|6%chance to apply bleeding from any normal attack. The effect deals 60% of the damage done and lasts for 5 turns. This effect stacks|

=

Class Skill Description
Barbarian Wound 6%chance to apply bleeding from any normal attack. The effect deals 60% of the damage done and lasts for 5 turns. This effect stacks

Date and time

[date=2019-05-08 time=04:32:00 timezone="America/New_York"]=

2019-05-08T08:32:00Z

4 Likes

Apple Smart Punctuation

On the iPhone

Setting >> Keyboards >> ( slide Smart Punctuation to OFF position )

stops -- from becoming β€”

This makes it possible to type

|---|---|

for tables.

6 Likes

The other way to handle this is by escaping the asterisk with a forward slash:

5\*s=5*s

2 Likes

Naming URLs

Manually

[Example.com](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Example.com) =
Example.com

If you accidentally put a space between ] and (

[Example.com] (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Example.com) =
[Example.com] (Example.com - Wikipedia)

Link button

You can also use the link button or Insert Hyperlink button

Which brings up the link dialogue box

3 Likes

Reposting for reference

3 Likes

Quoting

May be hard to quote

([Tip] Quoting spoiler text on the forum - updated with more Lorem ipsum)

FIN