Paragraphs and emphasis

1. Paragraphs#

Lines next to each other are one paragraph: the studio joins them with a space, whatever their length. A blank line ends the paragraph and starts the next.

These two lines of the sourceare one paragraph on the page.A blank line starts the next one.

This is what lets a source line break wherever it likes: an assistant’s answer wrapped at seventy characters, or a long sentence you broke to keep the editor tidy, is still one paragraph. Indentation at the start of a line is dropped — it never makes a code block, and it continues nothing except a list item or a footnote (see Lists and Footnotes).

Two consequences:

To break a line inside a paragraph, ask for it

with ⏎, the return sign (the editor’s ⏎ button types it). Two spaces at the end of a line, or a backslash, break nothing here.

Japanese and Chinese gain a space

where a source line ended, because the lines are joined with one and these languages put none between words. Keep each of their sentences on one line of the source.

A line of prose,⏎and the same paragraph on a new line.

2. Bold and italic#

Two stars round a stretch of text make it bold, one star italic, and the two nest one way: italics inside bold.

Text can be **bold**, *italic*, or **bold with *italic* inside**.

Italics follow two rules that come from writing about languages:

Never inside a word.

A star right after a letter or a digit does not start italics, so un*believ*able stays as typed.

Never across the target language.

A star next to a word of the target language is left as a star — a linguist writes one before a form that does not exist — and a stretch of italics that would hold a target word is not italicised at all. The dialect has its own sign for a wrong form, ✗ (Special characters).

Bold is more generous: **کتاب** makes the Persian word itself bold (in the target face’s bold), and bold may hold a target word among other words.

**کتاب** is bold Persian, and **the word کتاب** is bold with it.*کتاب* keeps its stars, and so does *a book, کتاب*, which holds a Persian word.

Two stars on one line with text between them are italics even when they stand apart as signs: in 5 * 3 * 2 the 3 comes out in italics. Write × for a multiplication, or a formula (Mathematics). A backslash before a star keeps it from starting italics, but the backslash is printed too: there are no escapes in the dialect.

3. Code#

One backtick on each side sets a stretch in a typewriter face, for a file name, a key to press, a thing typed rather than read.

Save the picture as `starter-apple.svg`, then press `Ctrl+S`.

Unlike ordinary Markdown, what is inside is still read: `**b**` comes out as a bold b in typewriter type, and a Persian word inside is still set as Persian. Code is for short things; the dialect has no code blocks, and a line of three backticks is ordinary text.

`**still bold**` inside code, in the studio

4. What is not there#

These are ordinary Markdown elsewhere, and text here — they show as typed:

Paper is not the screen here. The PDF’s typesetter has old habits of its own: on paper -- prints as an en dash –, --- as an em dash —, and a straight " or ' as a closing curly quote ” or ’ — on both sides of the word, which is wrong for the opening one. ... stays three dots on both. So type the real characters, “ ” ‘ ’ – — …, and the screen and the paper agree.

Pages 3–5 — “quoted”, and ‘quoted’ … the way you want them on both.

On paper, bold and italic are the PDF’s bold and italic, and code its typewriter face; a bold target word is set in the target face’s bold and is never broken across two lines.