Everything You Wanted To Know About Pastedown But Were Too Lazy To Lurk For It

Introduction

Pastedown is an extension of Markdown format to support all the features of horse words that you could want.
If you already know how to use Markdown, skip to the end for a cheatsheet.
If you don't know how to use Markdown, keep reading; it is not a paste-and-forget format and doesn't work how you would expect it to at first glance, and your pastes will break in weird, unexpected ways if you're not prepared!

Markdown Basics

Every line of text in Markdown must have two spaces at the end of each line. This is how Markdown knows to put your text onto a new line; just pressing Enter is not sufficient.
To demonstrate, let's use this haiku as an example:

Did you hear about  
Pastebin nuking all those greens  
Those nigger faggots  

If you highlight the haiku, you can see the two spaces at the end of each line.
Let's paste it directly underneath to see how it renders:
"
Did you hear about
Pastebin nuking all those greens
Those nigger faggots
"

Now, let's take the same haiku and delete the two spaces at the end of each line:

Did you hear about
Pastebin nuking all those greens
Those nigger faggots

Again, highlight the text and see for yourself.
Pasted directly underneath once again, it renders as:
"
Did you hear about Pastebin nuking all those greens Those nigger faggots

"

If this seems incredibly fucking annoying, that's because it is.
Unfortunately, it's a "feature" of Markdown formatting that, for the moment, we have to live with.

Automate the double-space

Lucky for us, we can automate the process so we don't need to suffer through manually doublespacing all our lines.
If your text is in a basic text file, you can use a sed one-liner on a *NIX system to do it for you:

sed 's/\s*$/  /' green.txt > pastedown.md

If you're shit scared of terminals, online converters such as this one exist that you can just slap your text into, hit a button, and get doublespaced text back out.
Whatever method you use, I suggest you use it religiously; it will save you a lot of headache in the long run.

Green, Red, and Purple Text

Greentext is started exactly like you would expect it to be.

Redtext is started with a backwards angle bracket, mercifully without the OBNOXIOUS ALL CAPS HEADING part.

And finally, purpletext is initiated with an at symbol.

Be warned: coloured text is currently bugged, causing the stuttered newlines you see above every time normal text ends and coloured text starts.

Bold, Italics, and Strikethrough

To apply bolding and italics, you use asterisks * like quotation marks around your text, stacking more of them depending on your desired text format.
To italicize your text, *use one asterisk* just like that.
To bold your text, **use two asterisks** just like that.
To do both at the same time, ***use three asterisks*** just like that.
Finally, to strikethrough your text, ~~use two tildes~~ in the same way to commit sudoku.

You can also use all of these in greentext, but be warned that bold text will remove the colour and turn the text black again.

Headings

Headings are the large, black lines of text, like the one directly above this line. They're used to create titles and subtitles in your text.
You create a heading using pound signs #, in a similar way to using greentext. The more pound signs you use, the smaller the heading will get, up to a maximum of 6 pound signs before the formatting breaks.
You can also create a max-size heading by "underlining" a line of text with at least three dashes ---, but this isn't recommended as three dashes is also used for another formatting type, described later.
To demonstrate all heading sizes:

# Size 1 heading

OR

Size 1 heading
--------------

Size 1 heading

## Size 2 heading

Size 2 heading

### Size 3 heading

Size 3 heading

#### Size 4 heading

Size 4 heading

##### Size 5 heading

Size 5 heading

###### Size 6 heading

Size 6 heading

Line Breaks

Line breaks are large horizontal lines that serve to break up your text.
A line break is created by putting either three dashes --- or three underscores ___, by themselves, in a line of text.
You are strongly advised to use underscores, as the dashes can create a heading instead where you don't want one.

---

OR

___

Code blocks

Code blocks are segments of monospace text, defined using backticks `.
You may also create a "fenced" code blocks by using three backticks, allowing you to span monospace text across multiple lines instead of inline with your text.
You've already seen me using these to demonstrate all the other formatting techniques ` without actually triggering them `.

When you're using a fenced code block like this,
The rules about needing two spaces at the end of each line no longer apply.

Links and image embedding

A clickable link can be achieved by simply pasting your URL into your paste, but you can pretty it up a lot more by formatting it as such: [The text that is clickable,](gopher://and-the-URL-of-your.site)
Image embedding works in the same way, but with an exclamation point prepended: ![The text that shows up if images are disabled,](nntp://and-the-URL-of-your.pic)
Before linking to your resources, make sure to follow Ponepaste's rules around links and embeds. Generally, that means no darknet links, nothing illegal, and overall following the same general spirit of the SFW rules of /mlp/.
Now for the obligatory examples:

[Ponepaste's privacy policy](https://ponepaste.org/page/privacy)  
![Ponepaste's Librerapay image](https://ponepaste.org/img/lib.png)  

Ponepaste's privacy policy

Bullet and Numeric Lists

Lists are exactly that, lists, but their formatting is a little bit funny.
Bullet lists can be started with either a single dash - or a plus sign + at the beginning of your lines. You can also use an asterisk *, but this is not recommended as it can conflict with bold and italic text.
Numeric lists are started very similarly, using a number followed by a period 1. , 2. , 3. ... at the beginning of the line, instead of a dash or a plus sign.
Whichever list you use, you can also nest your lists - putting another list under a list item - by just putting another list character right after the first one.
Any text you enter on the line directly underneath a list entry will be considered part of the previous entry, and will be indented to reflect that.
To break a list, you need to put at least two newlines after the list - that is, press Enter twice at the end of the list.
That was a lot to go over, so let's jump to the practical example of a bullet list:

+ The first entry of the list  
With some additional details  
+ On the second entry,  
+ + We need some sub-entries,  
+ + Just to drive home the point...  
+ + + A little bit harder!  
And harder...  
And harder!  
+ And on the third entry, he rested.  

• The first entry of the list
  With some additional details
• On the second entry,
• • We need some sub-entries,
• • Just to drive home the point...
• • • A little bit harder!
      And harder...
      And harder!
• And on the third entry, he rested.

And the same thing, but for a numeric list:

1. The first entry of the list  
With some additional details  
2. On the second entry,  
3. 1. We need some sub-entries,  
4. 2. Just to drive home the point...  
5. 3. 1. A little bit harder!  
And harder...  
And harder!  
6. And on the third entry, he rested.  

1. The first entry of the list
   With some additional details
2. On the second entry,
3. 1. We need some sub-entries,
4. 2. Just to drive home the point...
5. 3. 1. A little bit harder!
         And harder...
         And harder!
6. And on the third entry, he rested.

Note that the numeric list is a bit funny about the numbers, and I still don't know the particulars of how it works. Try to keep things simple to avoid any weirdness!

Tables

Finally, we get to the most fun formatting type: tables!
This is easier to explain if we start with an example, and work our way backwards.

| Name | Booping | Gayness |
| --- | :---: | ---: |
| Twiggles | Will sperg immediately upon booping | Depends on the shipfag of the hour |
| El Ponko | Mane hammerspace will eject confetti upon booping | *>implying the bike cares ^:)* |
| Rarara | Will give stink eye upon booping | Girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do |
| Dashie | Will be ruined for marriage upon booping | Twitter pls go and stay go |
| Appul | Will demand marriage upon booping | Will stone fags in Allah's name |
| Yellowquiet | Will compress into a nervous singularity upon booping | **>rape** |
| Poochie | Will break down and demand more human contact on booping | You're not just gay, you're the whole AIDS crisis |

As you can see, you use pipes | to define the columns of your table, and you fill out your first row from there.
The second row must contain at least three dashes --- in every column. If you want to align the text of a given column, you can use a single colon : before and/or after the dashes:

• One on the left for left-aligned text, :---. This is the default.
• One on the right for right-aligned text, ---:.
• One on both sides for centred text, :---:.

You then fill out as many rows as you need. You may use bold, italic, strikethrough, and code formatting in your table, along with links and image embeds.
You cannot greentext inside of a table, nor can you use lists, headings, line breaks, or fenced code blocks.
Finally, let's put our above example to good use:

The End

That about covers everything you need to know about Pastedown! I hope it was helpful for you!
If you need a super quick refresher on formatting, there's a cheatsheet table you can use:

Errata

Nothing yet!

Cheatsheet

Format	Usage	Notes	Example
Greentext	Begin line with >	Only works at the start of a line. Can't use in a table or list.	↑ See above ↑
Redtext	Begin line with <	Only works at the start of a line. Can't use in a table or list.	↑ See above ↑
Purpletext	Begin line with @	Only works at the start of a line. Can't use in a table or list.	↑ See above ↑
Horizontal Line	Begin line with at least 3 dashes - or underscores _	Using dashes directly under text will instead create a heading, see next entry ↓	↑ See above ↑
Headings	Begin line with 1-6 #, using more pound signs for smaller headings	Limit of 6 before formatting breaks. Can also underline text with at least 3 dashes to create a max size heading.	↑ See above ↑
Italics	Quote text with *	Will span multiple lines until terminated.	Sample Text
Bold	Quote text with **	Will span multiple lines until terminated.	Sample Text
Bolded Italics	Quote text with ***	Will span multiple lines until terminated.	Sample Text
Inline Code	Quote text with ` or ``	Will span multiple lines until terminated.	Sample Text
Code Block	Begin and end a group of lines with ```	Will span multiple lines until terminated.	↑ See above ↑
Strikethrough	Quote text with ~~	Will span multiple lines until terminated.	Sample Text
Hyperlinks	Write as [Link text](URL)	Follow site rules regarding links.	Ponepaste ko-fi
Inline images	Write as 	/mlp/ SFW rules apply, see site rules.
Bullet list	Begin line with +, -, or *	Continues spanning until broken with two newlines. Can nest entries.	↑ See above ↑
Ordered list	Begin line with 1. or another number	Continues spanning until broken with two newlines. Can nest entries.	↑ See above ↑
Tables	Define columns with pipes |, text goes between pipes. Second row must only contain at least three dashes in all columns. Populate remaining rows.	Colons : can be used in the second row to align column text; left, right, or centred.	Nigger just read the table example above, it's easier than reading this