Whether you’re a writer (or just a thinker), you will want to have a solid understanding of how you can use the static Org Mode syntax for crafting beautiful, richly formatted documents.
The Org Mode syntax is a structure markup language for crafting written content. Instead of highlighting a word and changing its font weight or decoration, you can denote formatting with special characters. Read on to see exactly how this works.
Bold, Italic, Preformatted text
You can make your text bold using asterisks like *this*, italics with forward slashes, like /so/, as well as _underlining_, and tildes for ~code~ text.
If you have a whole paragraph or more of preformatted text, you can use an “example” block:
#+begin_example Plain text here. #+end_example
There is a lot more you can do with structured templates like the above “_example” block, but that is outside the scope of what most writers will be doing, so it will be covered in a later article.
Subs and supers
Notice above how I used “_example” within the paragraph text. By default, Org Mode uses the underscore (“_”) and the up caret (“^”) to denote subscripts and superscripts. If you need these, they are enabled already. But if you want to ignore that, you can disable them by putting this at the top of your file:
#+OPTIONS: ^:nil
That’s what I use.
Also, do you want fancy quotes or straight ones?
This for fancy:
#+OPTIONS: ':t
This for straight:
#+OPTIONS: ':nil
Structured blocks (quotes and verses and code)
You’ve already seen the “_example” structured block. Now, there are a few more that would be particularly relevant for writers.
Org Mode blockquote provides a syntax for denoting multi-line quotations. Here’s an example:
#+begin_quote Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress. Her hand and wrist were so finely formed that she could wear sleeves not less bare of style than those in which the Blessed Virgin appeared to Italian painters; and her profile as well as her stature and bearing seemed to gain the more dignity from her plain garments, which by the side of provincial fashion gave her the impressiveness of a fine quotation from the Bible,---or from one of our elder poets,---in a paragraph of to-day's newspaper. --- George Eliot #+end_quote
In the example above, I used line breaks to keep the example from running off the page. However, those line breaks would be ignored in your final export. What if you want to preserve those line breaks? That’s what the verse block will do. This is ideal for reproducing bits of poetry:
#+begin_verse Say first—for Heaven hides nothing from thy view, Nor the deep tract of Hell—say first what cause Moved our grand parents, in that happy state, --- John Milton, /Paradise Lost/ #+end_verse
Well done! You’re now an expert in Org Mode syntax for writers.
From here, it’s time to start customizing Emacs with your personal touch.