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Novem Markdown

Use markdown to format text, and blocks to add pages, tables, images, and visualisations to documents and e-mails.

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Novem markdown extends markdown with text formatting and blocks. Blocks are written as {{ name key: value }} and add pages, layout, tables, KPI tiles, callouts, and embedded visualisations.

Document content also supports LaTeX math rendered with KaTeX. Set latex: true in the document's YAML frontmatter, then use $x^2$ for inline equations or $$...$$ at the start of a line for display equations. With latex: true, equations are omitted from e-mail output. See Math and equations for a complete example and delimiter rules.

Simple markdown is the text syntax described below. Supported formatting varies by field; names and summaries are plain text. See Markup for the differences.

Advanced markdown adds the blocks. It is available in document and e-mail content, and each block has its own reference page, indexed at the end of this page.

Simple markdown

Use the following syntax in fields that support Markdown formatting.

Headings

Novem supports five levels of headings denoted by the hash character in front of the text.

Markdown Result
# Heading 1

## Heading 2

### Heading 3

#### Heading 4

##### Heading 5
Heading 1
Heading 2
Heading 3
Heading 4
Heading 5

Quotes

Novem also allows formatted and nested quotes using the > character.

Markdown Result
> This is a quote
>
> > This is a double quote
> >
> > > This is a triple quote

This is a quote

This is a double quote

This is a triple quote

Lists

Markdown lists can be created using * to create unordered lists and 1. 2. etc to create ordered ones.

Markdown Result
- item one
- item two
  - sub item two - one
  - sub item two - two
  • item one
  • item two
    • sub item two - one
    • sub item two - two
1. item one
2. item two
3. item three
  1. item one
  2. item two
  3. item three

Bold and italic

Use **bold** for bold, *italic* for italic, and ***bold italic*** for both. In Novem content, _underline_ produces an underline.

Markdown Result
Use **bold**, *italic*, and ***bold italic***
to emphasise text.

Use bold, italic, and bold italic to emphasise text.

Super and sub script

Markdown supports superscript and subscript formatting using single carets ^...^ and single tildes ~...~ respectively.

Markdown Result
This is a ^superscript^ and a ~subscript~

This is a superscript and a subscript

Advanced Markdown

Blocks add layout and embedded content to Markdown. For example, vis embeds a plot and page starts a document page.

Blocks

A block starts with {{, a name, and its options as key: value pairs, on one line separated by commas or on several lines as YAML, and ends with }}.

{{ name
  option: value
}}

Leaf blocks such as page, vis, img and kpi stand alone. Container blocks such as callout, para, table and box wrap a body and close with the same name after a slash:

{{ callout
  type: warn
  border: false
}}

The September figures are **provisional** until all submissions arrive.

{{ /callout }}

Block index

In a document, blocks belong after the first page declaration ({{ page }}, {{ frontpage }} or {{ tocpage }}); e-mails need no page. See the following references for syntax and options: