Lists and Quotes

Lists are the most frequently used syntax in Markdown, yet the nesting rules for ordered and unordered items, the way task lists are written, and the combinations of blockquotes with lists all have plenty of easily confused edge cases.

The point of this chapter is not merely to memorize the syntax, but to understand how indentation determines the level. A two-level list needs four spaces of indentation rather than two — that single detail decides whether your list renders as a nested structure or as two sibling lists, and the two results look completely different. Nesting a blockquote inside a list depends on indentation in the same way.

By the end of this chapter you should be able to write a list at any depth, and know why some constructs that look correct on the page render incorrectly.