Use the MyST Markdown format, a markdown flavor that “implements the best parts of reStructuredText”, if you wish to render your notebooks using Sphinx or Jupyter Book. Use the R Markdown format if you want to open your Jupyter Notebooks in RStudio. Markdown Markdown is a lightweight, easy to learn markup language for formatting plain text. Its syntax has a one-to-one correspondence with HTML tags, so some prior knowledge here would be helpful but is definitely not a prerequisite.
Learning Objectives
Markdown for Jupyter notebooks cheatsheet. You can use Markdown to format documentation you add to Markdown cells in your Jupyter notebook. Here's how to format Markdown cells in Jupyter notebooks: Headings Use the number sign (#) followed by a blank space for notebook titles and section headings. One of the great things about Jupyter Notebook is how you can intersperse your code blocks with markdown blocks that you can use to add comments or simply more context around your code. Here are ten ways I like to use markdown in my Jupyter Notebooks. Use hashes for easy titles. In your markdown cell, enter a line like this.
- Explain what the
Markdown
format is. - Describe the role of
Markdown
for documentation of earth data science workflows. - Use
Markdown
syntax inJupyter Notebook
to:- Create headers and lists
- Bold and italicize bold text
- Render images and create hyperlinks to web pages
What is Markdown?
Markdown
is a human readable syntax (also referred to as a markup language) for formatting text documents. Markdown
can be used to produce nicely formatted documents including PDFs and web pages.When you format text using
Markdown
in a document, it is similar to using the format tools (e.g. bold, heading 1, heading 2) in a word processing tool like Microsoft Word or Google Docs. However, instead of using buttons to apply formatting, you use syntax such as **this syntax bolds text in markdown**
or # Here is a heading
.Markdown
syntax allows you to format text in many ways, such as making headings, bolding and italicizing words, creating bulleted lists, adding links, formatting mathematical symbols and making tables. These options allow you to format text in visually appealing and organized ways to present your ideas.![Markdown jupyter font size Markdown jupyter font size](/uploads/1/1/7/7/117769887/972791562.png)
You can use Markdown to format text in many different tools including GitHub.com, R using RMarkdown, and Jupyter Notebook, which you will learn more about this page.
Data Tip: Learn more about how you can use Markdown to format text and document workflows in a variety of tools.
Markdown in Jupyter Notebook
A great benefit of
Jupyter Notebook
is that it allows you to combine both code (e.g. Python
) and Markdown
in one document, so that you can easily document your workflows.A
Jupyter Notebook
file uses cells to organize content, and it can contain both cells that render text written using the Markdown
syntax as well as cells that contain and run Python
code.Thus, you can use a combination of
Markdown
and Python
code cells to organize and document your Jupyter Notebook
for others to easily read and follow your workflow.Data Tip: Learn more about Markdown for Jupyter Notebook. Hillbilly elegy memoir.
If you render your
Jupyter Notebook
file to HTML or PDF, this Markdown
will appear as formatted text in the output document.Data Tip: In fact, this web page that you are reading right now is generated from a
Markdown
document! On this page, you will learn the basic syntax of Markdown
.Benefits of Markdown for Earth Data Science
Being able to include both
Markdown
and code (e.g. Python
) cells in a Jupyter Notebook
file supports reproducible science by allowing you to:- Document your workflow: You can add text to the document that describes the steps of your processing workflow (e.g. how data is being processed and what results are produced).
- Describe your data: You can describe the data that you are using (e.g. source, pre-processing, metadata).
- Interpret code outputs: You can add some text that interprets or discusses the outputs.
all in one document!
When used effectively,
Markdown
documentation can help anyone who opens your Jupyter Notebook
to follow, understand and even reproduce your workflow.Format Text in Jupyter Notebook with Markdown
Markdown Cells in Jupyter Notebook
In the previous chapter on
Jupyter Notebook
, you learned how to add new Markdown
cells to your Jupyter Notebook
files using Menu tools and Keyboard Shortcuts to create new cells.Function | Keyboard Shortcut | Menu Tools |
---|---|---|
Create new cell | Esc + a (above), Esc + b (below) | Insert→ Insert Cell Above OR Insert → Insert Cell Below |
Copy Cell | c | Copy Key |
Paste Cell | v | Paste Key |
You also learned how to change the default type of the cell by clicking in the cell and selecting a new cell type (e.g.
Markdown
) in the cell type menu in the toolbar. Furthermore, you learned that in a Jupyter Notebook
file, you can double-click in any Markdown
cell to see the syntax, and then run the cell again to see the Markdown
formatting.Note: if you type text in a
Markdown
cell with no additional syntax, the text will appear as regular paragraph text. You can add additional syntax to that text to format it in different ways.On this page, you will learn basic
Markdown
syntax that you can use to format text in Jupyter Notebook
files.Section Headers
You can create a heading using the pound (
#
) sign. For the headers to render properly, there must be a space between the #
and the header text.Heading one is denoted using one
#
sign, heading two is denoted using two ##
signs, etc, as follows:Here is a sample of the rendered
Markdown
:Heading Three
Heading Four
Note: the titles on this page are actually formatted using
Markdown
(e.g. the words Section Headers above are formatted as a heading two).Lists
You can also use
Markdown
to create lists using the following syntax:It will render as follows:
- This is a bullet list
- This is a bullet list
- This is a bullet list
- And you can also create ordered lists
- by using numbers
- and listing new items in the lists
- on their own lines
Notice that you have space between the
*
or 1.
and the text. The space triggers the action to create the list using Markdown
.Bold and Italicize
You can also use
**
to bold or *
to italicize words. To bold and italicize words, the symbols have to be touching the word and have to be repeated before and after the word using the following syntax:It will render as follows:
These are italicized words, not a bullet listThese are bold words, not a bullet list
Markdown Jupyterlab
- This is a bullet item with bold words
- This is a bullet item with italicized words
Highlight Code
If you want to highlight a function or some code within a plain text paragraph, you can use one backtick on each side of the text like this:
which renders like this:
Here is some code!
The symbol used is the backtick, or grave; not an apostrophe (on most US keyboards, it is on the same key as the tilde (~)).
Horizontal Lines (Rules)
You can also create a horizontal line or rule to highlight a block of
Markdown
syntax (similar to the highlighting a block of code using the backticks):which renders like this:
Here is some important text!
Hyperlinks
You can also use HTML in
Markdown
cells to create hyperlinks to websites using the following syntax:<a href='url' target='_blank'>hyperlinked words</a>
You can identify the words that will be hyperlinked (i.e. prompt a web page to open when clicked) by replacing
hyperlinked words
in the example above.For example, the following syntax:
Our program website can be found at <a href='http://earthdatascience.org' target='_blank'>this link</a>.
will render as follows with
this link
as the hyperlinked words:Markdown Jupyterlab
Our program website can be found at this link.
Render Images
You can also use
Markdown
to link to images on the web using the following syntax:![alt text here](url-to-image-here)
The alt text is the alternative text that appears if an image fails to load on webpage; it is also used by screen-reading tools to identify the image to users of the screen-reading tools.
For example, the following syntax: Hp laserjet 1020 software download free.
Download citrix receiver 4.5 for windows 7 32 bit.
![Markdown Logo is here.](https://www.fullstackpython.com/img/logos/markdown.png)
will render as follows with an alt text of
Markdown Logo is here.
:![Markdown Jupyter Markdown Jupyter](/uploads/1/1/7/7/117769887/886608839.jpg)
Local Images Using Relative Computer Paths
You can also add images to a
Markdown
cell using relative paths to files in your directory structure using:![alt text here](path-to-image-here)
For relative paths (images stored on your computer) to work in
Jupyter Notebook
, you need to place the image in a location on your computer that is RELATIVE to your .ipynb
file. This is where good file management becomes extremely important.For a simple example of using relative paths, imagine that you have a subdirectory named
images
in your earth-analytics
directory (i.e. earth-analytics/images/
).If your
Jupyter Notebook
file (.ipynb
) is located in root of this directory (i.e. earth-analytics/notebook.ipynb
), and all images that you want to include in your report are located in the images
subdirectory (i.e. earth-analytics/images/
), then the path that you would use for each image is:images/image-name.png
If all of your images are in the
images
subdirectory, then you will be able to easily find them. This also follows good file management practices because all of the images that you use in your report are contained within your project directory.Data tip: There are many free
Markdown
editors out there! The atom.io editor is a powerful text editor package by GitHub, that also has a Markdown
renderer that allows you to preview the rendered Markdown
as you write.Additional Resources
Practice Your Markdown Skills
- Open or create a new
Jupyter Notebook
file. - Add a new
Markdown
cell and include:- A title for the notebook (e.g.
Intro to Earth Analytics - Chapter Four
) - A bullet list with:
- A bold word for
Author:
and then add text for your name. - A bold word for
Date:
and then add text for today’s date.
- A bold word for
- A title for the notebook (e.g.
- Add another
Markdown
cell and include:- A list of your top three favorite foods (e.g. blueberries, chocolate bars, avocados).
- Italicize the first item in your list.
- Add a hyperlink (i.e. webpages) for the second item in your list (include the name of the food in the title of the hyperlink).
- Add an image for the last item in your list (include the name in the alt text of the image).
- A list of your top three favorite foods (e.g. blueberries, chocolate bars, avocados).