Formatting Text
Documents are plain Markdown. To style words, you put marker characters on each side of them, such as ** for bold. The markers are saved in the file, so a published site and other Markdown editors show the same styles. In other editors, highlight is the exception: it is not standard Markdown, and an editor that does not support it shows the equals signs as you typed them.
The editor hides the markers on every line except the one with the cursor, so you see only the styled words. When you click a line or move to it with the arrow keys, its markers come back so you can edit them.
To add a style, you can type the markers, select words and press a marker key, or press a shortcut key that adds or removes the style.
Links behave the same way: the address stays in the text, but lines without the cursor show only the link words. Clicking a link to a website opens it. To edit the link instead, hold Ctrl (Cmd on a Mac) while you click, and the cursor goes into the link. Clicking a link to a file copies its path rather than opening it, because a web page cannot open files on your computer.
Each document you can edit has two buttons at the bottom left that start a new line after the block with the cursor. Start a new line of text adds a line of text, and Add a block adds a bullet.
Text styles
Type the markers on each side of the words:
| Style | Markers |
|---|---|
| Bold | **bold** or __bold__ |
| Italic | *italic* or _italic_ |
| Strikethrough | ~~struck~~ |
| Highlight | ==highlighted== |
| Inline code | `code` |
Obsidian and Logseq use the same highlight markers, so your highlights carry over when you move notes between EtherPK and either app.
Selected text
Select words within one line and press a marker key to put that character on each side of them. The marker keys are *, _, ~, =, the backtick, [ and (. The words stay selected inside the markers, and pressing the same key again adds a second layer:
the quick brown fox jumped
the quick brown fox jumped
the quick brown fox jumped
Press * or _ once for italic and twice for bold, the tilde twice for strikethrough, and the equals sign twice for highlight.
Pressing [ twice turns the words into a page link and opens the link menu with the words as its search. See Pages And Wikilinks for more information.
On a phone, the [[ and ]] buttons in the command bar do this in one tap. See EtherPK On A Phone for more information.
With nothing selected, a marker key types just its own character, so typing ** gives exactly **.
Shortcut keys
Three shortcut keys add a style to words you select within one line, or remove it if the words already have that style:
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| Ctrl+B (Cmd+B on a Mac) | Add or remove bold |
| Ctrl+I (Cmd+I on a Mac) | Add or remove italic |
| Ctrl+Shift+H (Cmd+Shift+H on a Mac) | Add or remove highlight |
If nothing is selected, the key inserts an empty pair of markers at the cursor. Type your words, then press the same key again to jump past the closing markers and carry on in plain text:
****
fox
fox jumped
The keys do nothing in a code block, in inline code or in the frontmatter at the top of a document, because a style there would show up as plain characters. See Code Maths And Diagrams for code blocks and Titles Aliases And Frontmatter for the frontmatter.
Headings, quotes and rules
Start a line with one to six # signs and a space to make a heading of that level, or with > to make a quote.
Type ---, *** or ___ on a line by itself to draw a horizontal rule. Directly under a line of text, though, --- turns that text into a heading, so leave a blank line between the text and the rule:
above
---
below
Start a line with - to make a bullet. See Outliner Blocks for more information.
Links to websites
Each of these lines contains a link:
see examplehttps://example.com here
Visit https://example.com/docs?a=1 today
go https://example.com now
www.example.com then docs@example.com
An address that starts with https:// or http:// is a link on its own. To show other words in place of the address, write [words](address). Links open in a new browser tab.
Links to files on your computer
A file link is a file:// address, usually file:/// followed by the path, and you can write it in three forms:
bare file:///home/g/My%20Doc.pdf here
angle file:///C:/Users/g/q3.docx here
labelled the reportfile://server/share/plans.xlsx here
Write a space in the path as %20, because a file link without brackets ends at the first space.
Clicking a file link, or the Copy path icon after it, copies the path for you to paste into a file manager, a terminal or an Open dialog. Each %20 in it becomes a space again. A link with a drive letter gives a Windows path and a link with a server name other than localhost gives a network share path, whatever computer you are on:
file:///home/g/My%20Doc.pdf -> /home/g/My Doc.pdf
file:///C:/Users/g/q3.docx -> C:\Users\g\q3.docx
file://server/share/plans.xlsx -> \\server\share\plans.xlsx
If a file belongs with a note, add it as an asset instead. Assets are stored in the graph and go with it when you export or publish the graph. See Images And Files for more information.
New lines and blocks
Both buttons put the cursor on the new line, ready for you to type.
In a list, Start a new line of text puts the new line after the top-level bullet with the cursor and all the bullets under it, so nested bullets keep their parent. The list splits in two around the new line. For example, with the cursor on water the beans, pressing the button and typing Some notes gives:
water the beans
Some notes
see [Kitchen]
Add a block adds a bullet at the same depth as the one with the cursor, after that bullet and any bullets under it. Pressing it from the same place and typing weed the leeks gives:
water the beans
weed the leeks
see [Kitchen]
When the document has no cursor, or the cursor is in the frontmatter, the new line goes at the end of the document. If you leave a new line empty, the editor removes it when the cursor moves away, so a stray press leaves no blank lines behind.
Undo and redo
Press Ctrl+Z (Cmd+Z on a Mac) to undo. To redo, press Ctrl+Y on Windows and Linux, or Cmd+Shift+Z on a Mac. See Keyboard Shortcuts for more information.
Each open document keeps its own undo history until you close the tab or reload the page. In a synced graph, undo reverses only your own edits, never another person's typing. See Synced Graphs for more information.