Markdown Syntax Guide



Tracker uses a version of Markdown (“Tracker-Flavored Markdown”) for description, comments, tasks, blockers and titles. It is very similar to GitHub-Flavored Markdown, which improves upon Standard Markdown in many ways.

Markdown Syntax Guide

Markdown utilizes an easily consumable plaintext syntax to denote rich content elements such as bold/italic items, numbered and bulleted lists, code blocks, headers, and images. Getting started with Markdown is fairly easy. If you’re not familiar with Markdown, it may be worth your while to read Daring Fireball’s Markdown Syntax Guide.

Tracker uses a version of Markdown (“Tracker-Flavored Markdown”) for description, comments, tasks, blockers and titles. It is very similar to GitHub-Flavored. Content Markdown Syntax. Let's face it: Writing content for the Web is tiresome. WYSIWYG editors help alleviate this task, but they generally result in.

Preview markdown

When you use markdown in a story or epic description or comment field, you can click the Preview tab to see how the markdown will render after you save your changes.

Edit modePreview mode

Basic syntax

The following overview will introduce you to some of the most commonly used Markdown Syntax, which can be used in story descriptions, comments, tasks, blockers and titles (though some fields offer limited support, see Where you can use Markdown).

Styling text

StyleSyntaxExampleOutput
Strikethrough~~ ~~~~I didn't mean to write this~~I didn’t mean to write this
Bold** ** or __ __**I love Tracker** or __I love Tracker__I love Tracker
Italic* * or _ _*I love Tracker* or _I love Tracker_I love Tracker
Bold and Italic*** *** or ___ ___***I love Tracker*** or ___I love Tracker___I love Tracker

Blockquotes

Quote your text with a greater-than angle bracket >

Links

Create inline links by wrapping text in brackets [ ], then wrapping the URL in parenthesis ( )

Lists

Create bulleted lists by preceding lines of text with - or *

Create numbered lists by preceding each line with a number. Note that lists beginning with an arbitrary number will automatically be converted to start with 1

Create unordered combination and nested ordered lists by indenting lines with four spaces

Headers

Use anywhere from 1-6 hash # characters at the start of the line, corresponding to header levels 1-6

Inline images

Insert inline images using the following syntax

Inline code blocks

To fence off a span of code, wrap the text with backticks

The word `code` has been fenced off with backticks.

You can add syntax highlighting for quite a few languages, including Gherkin, by adding a language name after the opening three backticks of your fenced code block. See our post “Syntax Highlighting- now with more Gherkin” for more details.

For more on mastering Markdown please see Daring Fireball’s Markdown Syntax Guide as well as GitHub’s Guide to Mastering Markdown.

Tables

Add tables by using three or more hyphens to create a header for each column (---), and separate those columns using pipes (|). Optionally, you can use pipes on either end of your table.

The output will render similar to this:

Cat BreedsTemperament
Maine CoonGentle giant
SiameseChatty Cathy
PantherLess gentle giant

The cell widths can vary and will not affect the rendered output.

Guide

Align the text in your columns to the left, right, or center by adding a colon (:) to the left, right, or on both sides of the hyphens within the header row.

Markdown Syntax Guide

Here’s how the above alignment choices will render:

Cat BreedsColorTemperament
Maine CoonAll typesGentle giant
SiameseBlack and tanChatty Cathy
PantherBlack or tanLess gentle giant

Where you can use Markdown

Description: full Tracker-Flavored Markdown

Activity: full Tracker-Flavored Markdown

Title: only bold, italic, strikethrough, and links

Tasks: only inline Markdown (such as bold, italic, strikethrough, links, story tags, inline code blocks, etc.)

Blockers: full Tracker-Flavored Markdown

Project Profile: full Tracker-Flavored Markdown

Differences from Standard Markdown

New lines

With Standard Markdown, new lines are stripped out between elements, which often causes unintentional formatting issues. Like GitHub-Flavored Markdown, Tracker renders line breaks between content elements as </br> tags, and double line breaks as new paragraphs.

Multiple underscores in words

Markdown interprets * or _ wrapped words and phrases as bold and italic emphasis. Since underscores are often used within text to define method names and variables (e.g., some_method_name), Tracker ignores interior _ and * characters.

URL Auto-linking

Tracker automatically links URLs beginning with http:// or https://. This differs from Standard Markdown, which requires distinct tagging for URLs.

Fenced code blocks and code highlighting

Markdown Syntax Guide For Beginners

Focusrite sound cards & media devices driver. As with GitHub, Tracker enables fenced code blocks by wrapping content with three backticks, whereas Standard Markdown converts text elements prefixed with a tab or spaced text elements to code blocks.

Note:

By default, Tracker does not highlight syntax in code blocks. To enable syntax highlighting, add the language name next to the first line of backticks.

@mention autocompletes

Tracker supports mentioning of team members within comments. Tracker will attempt to autocomplete team members’ names when prefixed with the @ symbol.

Story and epic tagging

Tracker also supports hyperlinking of stories and epics by IDs. Story IDs prefixed with # (e.g., #12345) will link to that story. Epic IDs prefixed with ## (e.g., ##54321) will link to that epic.

Similarly, Tracker will detect story URLs and condense them into their associated IDs.

Basic Formatting

  • Bold: **Bold**
  • Emphasized: *Emphasized*
  • Strikethrough : ~~Strikethrough~~
  • Horizontal rules: --- (three hyphens), *** (three asterisks), or ___ (three underscores).

Headings

Markdown

All heading levels (e.g. H1, H2, etc), are marked by # at the beginning of a line. For example, an H1 is # Heading 1 and an H2 is ## Heading 2. This continues to ###### Heading 6.

Markdown Syntax Cheat Sheet

Links

Links can be created using several methods:

Markdown Syntax Guide Download

  • Links can be [inline](https://markdowntohtml.com)
  • Inline links can [have a title](https://markdowntohtml.com 'Awesome Markdown Converter')
  • Also, there can be reference links that allow the URL to be placed later in the document:
    • Here is a [reference link][markdowntohtml] that links to this site.
    • References are case-insensitive (for example [this link][MarkDownToHTML] works).
    • References can also [use numbers][1].
    • Or leave it empty and use the [link text itself].
  • Also, you can use relative links [like this](./blob/master/LICENSE.txt).
  • URLs and URLs in angle brackets will automatically get turned into links: https://markdowntohtml.com or <https://markdowntohtml.com>.
URLs for reference links are somewhere later in the document like this:

Markdown Quick Reference

Images

Images can also be inline or use a reference style, similar to links. Simply prepend an exclamation point to turn the link into an image. For example: