MMD Syntax: Itemized and Enumerated Lists

Scrivener Markdown & LaTeX
1

Hi all.

I was wondering if there was a good reference to MMD syntax. Fletcher’s website is kind of unorganized; I can’t find a concise document that details MMD syntax. Other than xxx for italics and xxx for bold.

What I’m looking for is how to get into my Scrivener text the equivalent of LaTeX’s “\begin{enumerate} \item asdfasdf \item asdfasdf \end{enumerate}”

Am I just asking for too much here?

2

Here is a link to the official guide.

To briefly answer your question: yes it is easy to make enumerated and itemised lists, and there are a few tricks you can use to make them quite useful. First, the basic syntax:

* This will create an itemised list
* Place an asterisk or a hyphen at the front of each line
- With a space after the punctuation mark
-     Or a tab, if you prefer that look
- That's all there is too it!

1. An enumerated list is made like this
2. Enter a number, followed by a dot and a space
3. In front of each line
2. The numbers don't actually matter, though
10. When exported, this will be number (5)

That numbers are ignored make it easy to insert lines later on and not worry about having re-number everything.

Lists can be combined and indented, too.

* Here is a bullet line
     1. Item one
     2. Item two
     3. Just add either five spaces, or a tab to create a sub-list
* And another bullet

Finally, if you need multi-paragraph list elements, you can do this as well.

* The line starts here

     And continues here. This will be displayed as a new paragraph.
* You could start the next bullet right after

     But I like to add a second space after multi-paragraph lines.

* This is okay to do, and remains a part of the same list.
* I think it looks better that way.

With Scrivener, since it is a rich text editing environment, you could even make a style that indents the bullets so that everything looks nice and tidy, and not too dissimilar from ordinary RTF style lists. Here is what lists look like in my Scrivener projects, if I care to style them:

Since all formatting get thrown out, it is perfectly safe to do this.

3

Thank you so much for your reply!!!

That’s EXACTLY what I needed!

(I still don’t see where Fletcher discusses that syntax in the guide… I must be having a series of brain farts)

4

You’re welcome!

And you know, you are right! The guide I linked to just discusses the “Multi” part of MultiMarkdown. The basic Markdown syntax, which MMD is a superset of, can be found here. Most of the “everyday” stuff you need to know is in that document. The MMD stuff is nearly exclusively all about handling large documents and document conversions to various formats. There are a few syntax additions though, such as footnotes (which you don’t really need to worry about as Scrivener will convert its footnote ranges for you), tables, and some automated handling of cross-referencing syntax so you can do things like “See figure [calcium_cannon][] for a practical demonstration.”

5

Thanks again! I knew I wasn’t looking in the right place for the syntax.

I’m well versed in LaTeX; I just wanted to harness Scrivener’s drafting powers. 8)

As soon as the bar exam is over I’ll be purchasing a Scrivener license. And finishing my book. :smiley:

6

That will help you out a lot then. MMD is a nice “face” for making LaTeX documents. Writing in LaTeX isn’t the prettiest thing in the world. I love the format to death, but don’t like writing in it very much. Being able to generate 95–99% of it with MMD is a huge time-saver and the documents look much prettier too. For that last 1–5% though, if you even need it, it is nice to know your way around.

Good luck on the exam, and your book!