The Tumblr App Sucks But Here’s How To Format Posts In It

The Tumblr App Sucks But Here’s How To Format Posts In It

All right, kiddos, gather ‘round for a little tutorial on the wonders of Markdown, you can access the whole documentation here, if you’re interested, this is only a small introduction on how to use it in the Tumblr App.

What’s Markdown?

Markdown is a language that makes it super easy to turn normal human-readable syntax into HTML. You know, HTML, the things websites are made of? Yeah. Cool as all hell, I know.

How can I use it in tumblr?

You can use Markdown whilst making a tumblr post by simply clicking on the litte settings wheel, and changing your text editor from Rich Text to Markdown, and just get writing! If you click Preview, you can see how what you’re writing will look on everyone’s dashes!

What about on mobile?

If you’ve ever used the Tumblr App to make a post, you’ll know formatting is nigh impossible, literally impossible if you use the default Rich Text editor. So if you want to do some formatting (and I’m talking almost everything tumblr allows you to put into a post) you’re gonna want to use our friend Markdown.

Just click on the settings wheel on the bottom-right corner of your screen to change the settings of your post (the same way you’d change a post to be Drafted, or Queued) and scroll until you find the option EDITOR, and just change that bad boy to Markdown. Click the back arrow, and just start writing! Once you’re done, just click post, and your Post will be fully formatted!

So how can I do cool stuff on Markdown for my dank ass posts?

All right, let’s go through the basics:

NEWLINES

One important thing about Markdown that might be hard to get used to, is that you need to press Enter twice for a newline to actually appear. If you only press it once, the text will show up on the same line!

BOLD

To make your text bold, put it between two asterisks, like this: **text**.

ITALIC

To make your text italic, put it between underscores like this: _text_

H TEXT AKA TITLES

To turn your text into a bigger text (the H option), put a hash and a space in front of it, like this: # text. The space between hash and text is important!

LINKS

Maybe the most annoying part of tumblr’s formatting ways, this is ridiculously easy in Markdown, if a bit hard to remember. The link’s syntax is this: [text](the_actual_link).

An example of this would be [this is a link to a cool blog](http://holomoriarty.tumblr.com/) which will show up like this: this is a link to a cool blog

STRIKETHROUGH

Sadly Markdown’s syntax doesn’t support strikethrough! This is a real bummer, but you can always use the traditional HTML tag strike, like this: < strike > text <\ strike >. Just without the spaces in between the angles and the word!

LISTS

List syntax is super organic in Markdown. In a new line, use - a space, and your text. To create another element in the list, just press enter, and repeat the process! You can think of the dashes as the bullets in your list, as with the hash, the space between the symbol and the text is important!

NUMBERED LISTS

Same as the latter, but instead of using a dash you need to use a number, and a period, like so 1. again, don’t forget the space!

BLOCKQUOTE

To put your text in a blockquote (or indentation) just put one > in front of the line you want in the blockquote! The blockquote will extend until you press Enter twice (meaning it’ll put the whole line in blockquote).

IMAGES

Yes, you can insert images on your posts with Markdown, if you have a link to them. Just use this syntax (it’s pretty similar to the link one!) .

An example of this would be  Which would show up like this:

HORIZONTAL LINES

This recently introduced feature of tumblr.com will put a divider between two lines of text, and in Markdown it’s as simple as using 3 or more dashes in a line like this - - -.

READ MORE

So Markdown DOES support Read Mores, which I didn’t knew when I first posted this, excuse me lol. Just put a [[ MORE ]] WITHOUT THE SPACES BETWEEN THE WORD AND THE [ SYMBOL on the new line where you want the Read More to go.

VIDEOS AND TUMBLR SEARCH FEATURE’S GIFS

Not implemented! A real shame, but there are some things you might just need the full Tumblr PC experience for!

So where do we go from here?

Now that you know how to write Tumblr Posts on Markdown, USE IT EVERYWHERE. Markdown is something I use literally every day of my life. To work with it you might need to download a special editor (Atom is SO recommended, it’s ridiculous) but usually these are also a hundred times better than writing on Microsoft Word. Markdown’s your friend, use it!