beyond markdown
— part 7
text styling and typographic niceties
this is part 7 in a series on “z.m.l.”
— zen markup language — that’s
a light-markup system you might
consider to replace markdown.
for links to the other parts, see below.
in this part, we discuss styling of
words and phrases, plus some of
the small typographical changes
made during a z.m.l. conversion,
and two special .html characters.
text styling
italics
it’s important to enable the type of
text-styling that writers often use,
primary among them being _italics_.
surround a word with _underscores_,
and z.m.l. will show the word in italics.
and for a phrase, _do_ _each_ _word_.
we will explore additional methods,
like the more-traditional “toggle” —
_successively turning italics on and off_
— but for now you must do each word.
(no, z.m.l. won’t show the underscores;
i am just doing that here, on medium,
so i can repurpose this text elsewhere.)
and yes, z.m.l. is smart enough to know
not to replace underscores in a u.r.l.,
so you don’t need to wonder about that.
unlike some flavors in other systems,
you _can_ use intraword italics in z.m.l.
because a survey of printed-books show
it’s not an unknown practice of writers,
and z.m.l. exists to serve writers’ needs.
bold
sometimes *bold* is also used, but
it should be noted that, other than
in headers, *bold* is rarely found in
printed-books. still, as it’s employed
more often online, z.m.l. supports it.
surround a word with *asterisks* and
z.m.l. will display that word in bold.
yes, for a phrase, *do* *each* *word*.
(no, the asterisks will not be shown.)
and yes, you can use asterisks in all
the other places you wanna use them,
and z.m.l. will sort them out, and if
it makes a mistake, you let me know.
monospaced
last, ~a~ ~monospaced~ ~typeface~ is
used in many tech documents, so it
is supported in z.m.l., even though
it’s almost never seen in print-books.
(except for tech-oriented ones, yes.)
to get a monospace typeface, use a
tilde or the “`” key above the tilde.
medium offers no inline monospace,
as far as i know, so no input sample.
the same rules as for italics and bold.
~a~ ~monospaced~ ~typeface~
this is what z.m.l. supports for styling
in its “default” mode, but we make it
easy for users to customize the settings
to meet the needs of a specific document.
so if you need other styling, you can get it.
if you need to disable the default, you can.
typographic considerations
we want our output to look nice,
and to this end z.m.l. supports
a few typographic conventions,
i.e., curly-quotes and em-dashes.
curly-quotes
z.m.l. will turn straight-quotes
into curly quotes automatically.
but if you prefer your document
to have straight-quotes, which is
your right, no matter what some
typographic fanatics might say,
it’s easy to disable this feature.
em-dashes
likewise with em-dashes — z.m.l.
converts a plain-text double-dash
into a long typographic em-dash —
but you can disable it if you choose.
code-blocks
note than none of these substitutions
are performed on code-blocks, of course,
because they would mess up the code.
.html special characters
there are some characters that
have special meaning in .html,
and thus need special treatment
when we do an .html conversion.
the “less than” left-angle-bracket
because the left-angle-bracket is used
to signal .html tags, z.m.l. disables it,
by turning it into its < “equivalent”.
the ampersand
the ampersand — “&* — also has to be
disabled so it won’t cause any problems.
***
ok, that’s all for today!
***
here are the articles in this series:
beyond markdown — part 1 — it’s time for the next step https://medium.com/@bbirdiman/beyond-markdown-part-1-2300665659f7
beyond markdown — part 2 — z.m.l. was built to be easy to understand https://medium.com/@bbirdiman/beyond-markdown-part-2-b3527d2b9dcf
beyond markdown — part 3 — two types of chunks — paragraphs and blocks https://medium.com/@bbirdiman/beyond-markdown-part-3-eed9bebea0da
beyond markdown — part 4 — how to “tag” a block for formatting https://medium.com/@bbirdiman/beyond-markdown-part-4-9b4dc6841d7e
beyond markdown — part 5 — shining a spotlight on sections and headers
https://medium.com/@bbirdiman/beyond-markdown-part-5-4902097723b0
beyond markdown — part 6 — notes on a few types of “special” paragraphs
https://medium.com/@bbirdiman/beyond-markdown-part-6-8056eee5b783
beyond markdown — part 7 — text styling and typographic niceties
https://medium.com/@bbirdiman/beyond-markdown-part-7-3158e23f22bf
beyond markdown — part 8 — alignment, horizontal rules, and breaks
https://medium.com/@bbirdiman/beyond-markdown-part-8-1a082d7f1f6d
beyond markdown — part 9 — pulling outside resources into your document
https://medium.com/@bbirdiman/beyond-markdown-part-9-be74bbbed369
beyond markdown — part 10 — special sections in your document
https://medium.com/@bbirdiman/beyond-markdown-part-10-3ca0c08e5641
***
and, for reference, as an extra bonus:
markdown considered harmful — or perhaps a loved but irritating old uncle
https://medium.com/@bbirdiman/markdown-considered-harmful-495ccfe24a52
