In this tutorial, we will delve into a comprehensive guide on how to utilize Markdown in Atlassian Confluence. This tutorial is aimed at helping software engineers and other technical users to edit and format their texts effectively using markdown language.

Introduction To Confluence Markdown

Markdown is a lightweight markup language that assists users in formatting text. Atlassian Confluence, a widely-used team collaboration software, supports markdown language for easier text editing and formatting out of the box. View Confluence’s page on markdown for all their markdown support.

Using Confluence Markdown

Headers

There are several levels of headers available in Markdown. They are expressed by using the pound sign # preceding the heading text. For example:

# This is an H1
## This is an H2
### This is an H3

This is how the headers look when displayed:

This is an H1

This is an H2

This is an H3

Emphasis

In Markdown, you make a text bold using two asterisks or underscores **bold** or __bold__. To italicize a text, you use one asterisk or underscore *italic* or _italic_. Here’s a demonstration:

**This is bold text**
*This is italicized text*

Output:

This is bold text
This is italicized text

Lists

Markdown allows you to make ordered and unordered lists. For unordered lists, you can use asterisks, plus or hyphens interchangeably. For ordered lists, use numbers followed by a period.

- Item 1
- Item 2
- Item 3

1. Item 1
2. Item 2
3. Item 3

Output:

  • Item 1
  • Item 2
  • Item 3
  1. Item 1
  2. Item 2
  3. Item 3

In markdown, you can add a hyperlink to text by enclosing the text in brackets [] and then follow it immediately by the URL in parentheses ().

[Confluence Docs](https://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/docs)

Output:

Confluence Docs

Code Blocks

Code blocks are crucial for technical documents. To create a code block in markdown, wrap your code with three backticks ```. For syntax highlighting, specify the language after the first three backticks.

```python
def hello_world():
    print('Hello, world!')
`` `

Output:

def hello_world():
    print('Hello, world!')

Remember, Confluence might not support all markdown syntax, such as tables and inline HTML. Therefore, it is always better to double-check with the official documentation to ensure the tool supports the markdown syntax you intend to use.

Wrapping Up

This article provides a primer on using Confluence Markdown, which is an easy-to-learn, read, and write syntax for text formatting. By practicing and implementing these formatting techniques in your Confluence content, you can make your technical documents more organized and readable.