Org mode syntax
Quick reference card

Set the toc attribute to activate an auto-generated table of contents (limited to its 2 first levels) at the top of document.

#+OPTIONS:   toc:2

#+OPTIONS:   p:t

To locally insert the TOC at some random place, use the #+TOC: headlines [n] feature; for example:

#+TOC: headlines 2

#+TOC: figures is not implemented yet in the HTML backend.

#+TOC: tables is already implemented in the HTML backend.

You can create numbered headings up to a certain level by setting an option:

#+OPTIONS: H:4

By entering two consecutive backslashes,
you can force a line break without starting a new paragraph.

For an horizontal line, insert at least 5 dashes: this is some text above an horizontal rule

and some text below it.

Emphasize (italics), strongly (bold), and very strongly (bold italics).

Markup elements can be nested:

This is italic text which contains underlined text within it, whereas this is normal underlined text.

Markup can span across multiple lines, by default no more than 2:

*This is not bold.*

Org mode does not interpret a marker surrounded by alphanumeric characters as an emphasis marker. So, you can't (easily) emphasize just part of a word:

Not feas*ible*.

Other elements to use sparingly are:

• monospaced typewriter font for inline code
• monospaced typewriter font for verbatim text
• deleted text (vs. inserted text)
• text with super^{script}, such as 2^{10}
• text with sub_{script}, such as H_{2}O

If the XXX option is specified, Org mode will produce typographically correct output, converting straight quotes to curly quotes, --- to em-dashes, -- to en-dashes, and ... to ellipses.

Itemized lists are marked with bullets. Create them with a minus or a plus sign.

They are convenient to organize data, and make the document prettier, and easier to read.

• Item with some lengthy text wrapping hopefully across several lines. We add a few words to really show the line wrapping.
• Bullet.
  • Bullet.
    • Bullet.

• [X] Checked.
• [-] Half-checked.
• [ ] Not checked.
• Normal list item.

Enumerated lists are marked with numbers or letters:

1. Arabic (decimal) numbered list item. We add a few words to show the line wrapping. A. Upper case alpha (letter) numbered list item. a. Lower alpha. b. Lower alpha. B. Upper alpha.
2. Number.

You can have ordered lists with jumping numbers:

2. We start with point number 2.
3. Automatically numbered item.

Labeled, multi-line lists.

First term to define

Definition of the first term. We add a few words to show the line wrapping, to see what happens when you have long lines.

Second term

Explication of the second term with inline markup.

In many paragraphs.

Adjacent lists sometimes like to fuse. To force the start of a new list, offset the two lists by an empty line comment:

• apples
• oranges
• bananas

• carrots
• tomatoes
• celery

Org tables have cells of at most one line long: there is no such thing as a multi-line table cell in Org.

Columns are automatically aligned:

• Number-rich columns to the right, and
• String-rich columns to the left.

You can create tables with an header row (by using an horizontal line of dashes to separate it from the rest of the table).

To test "sticky table headers"…

XXX Different from the following:

You can fill a table from a CSV file using R commands.

See http://www.pirilampo.org (automatic!) and the Org mode Web site.

Click to see the Unicorn picture.

Books usually align/float images on the right/left of the contents.

XXX Available HTML image tags include …

Place images side by side: XXX

To define images that will be treated as book illustrations (figures) and automatically labeled and numbered, use XXX.

Simple box ("inline task"):

Use the quote block for content that doesn't require the preservation of line breaks.

#+begin_quote
Let us change our traditional attitude to the construction of programs:
Instead of imagining that our main task is to instruct a computer what to do,
let us concentrate rather on explaining to human beings what we want a
computer to do.

The practitioner of literate programming can be regarded as an essayist, whose
main concern is with exposition and excellence of style. Such an author, with
thesaurus in hand, chooses the names of variables carefully and explains what
each variable means. He or she strives for a program that is comprehensible
because its concepts have been introduced in an order that is best for human
understanding, using a mixture of formal and informal methods that reinforce
each other.

-- Donald Knuth
#+end_quote

Let us change our traditional attitude to the construction of programs: Instead of imagining that our main task is to instruct a computer what to do, let us concentrate rather on explaining to human beings what we want a computer to do.

The practitioner of literate programming can be regarded as an essayist, whose main concern is with exposition and excellence of style. Such an author, with thesaurus in hand, chooses the names of variables carefully and explains what each variable means. He or she strives for a program that is comprehensible because its concepts have been introduced in an order that is best for human understanding, using a mixture of formal and informal methods that reinforce each other.

– Donald Knuth

A short one:

#+begin_quote
Everything should be made as simple as possible,
but not any simpler. -- Albert Einstein
#+end_quote

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not any simpler. – Albert Einstein

In a verse environment, there is an implicit line break at the end of each line, and indentation is preserved:

#+begin_verse
Everything should be made as simple as possible,
but not any simpler. -- Albert Einstein
#+end_verse

Everything should be made as simple as possible,
but not any simpler. – Albert Einstein

Another example: Typically used for quoting passages of an email message:

>> The meeting has been postponed to next Friday.
>
> Has the deadline for the report been moved too?

Yes. And chekout http://www.doodle.com/ for rescheduling the meeting.

In the text body,
   indentation is
preserved.

Insert the Unicode character 00A0 to add a non-breaking space.

FIXME Or add/use an Org entity? Or use tilde?

#+MACRO: longtext this very very long text

Insert {{{longtext}}} wherever required.

Insert this very very long text wherever required.

Emacs comes with these built in macros:

{{{title}}}
{{{author}}}
{{{email}}}
{{{date}}}
{{{date(FORMAT)}}}
{{{time(FORMAT)}}}
{{{modification-time(FORMAT, VC)}}}
{{{property(PROPERTY-NAME)}}}
{{{property(PROPERTY-NAME,SEARCH-OPTION)}}}
{{{n}}}
{{{n(NAME)}}}
{{{n(NAME,ACTION)}}}

Org mode syntax
Tuomas Pyyhtiä
first.last@domain.fi


FORMAT
FORMAT 1 1 1

#+MACRO: color @@html:<span style="color: $1">$2</span>@@

{{{color(blue, This text is colored in blue.)}}}

{{{color(red, This other text is in red.)}}}

This text is colored in blue.

This other text is in red.

Other macros from https://github.com/fniessen/org-macros e.g.:

Keyboard macro:
Use {{{kbd(C-c a a)}}} to launch the agenda.

Use C-c a a to launch the agenda.

Bgcolor Macro:
{{{bgcolor(red, This information is important.)}}} {{{bgcolor(#E0E0E0, This other isn’t.)}}}

Common color names are supported by most Org exporters (HTML, LaTeX):

{{{bgcolor(red, red)}}} {{{bgcolor(orange, orange)}}} {{{bgcolor(yellow, yellow)}}} {{{bgcolor(green, green)}}} {{{bgcolor(blue, blue)}}} {{{bgcolor(purple, purple)}}} {{{bgcolor(violet, violet)}}}

You can also use hexadecimal color codes:

{{{bgcolor(#FF0000, #FF0000)}}} {{{bgcolor(#00FF00, #00FF00)}}} {{{bgcolor(#0000FF, #0000FF)}}}

Common color names are supported by most Org exporters (HTML, LaTeX):

You can also use hexadecimal color codes:

Color macro:
{{{color(red, This information is important.)}}} {{{color(#E0E0E0, This other isn’t.)}}}

Common color names are supported by most Org exporters (HTML, LaTeX):

{{{color(red, red)}}} {{{color(orange, orange)}}} {{{color(yellow, yellow)}}} {{{color(green, green)}}} {{{color(blue, blue)}}} {{{color(purple, purple)}}} {{{color(violet, violet)}}}

You can also use hexadecimal color codes:

{{{color(#FF0000, #FF0000)}}} {{{color(#00FF00, #00FF00)}}} {{{color(#0000FF, #0000FF)}}}

This information is important. This other isn’t.

Common color names are supported by most Org exporters (HTML, LaTeX):

red orange yellow green blue purple violet

You can also use hexadecimal color codes:

#FF0000 #00FF00 #0000FF

fixme macro:
{{{fixme}}} Delete this…

FIXME Delete this…

Highlight macro:
{{{hl(This information is important.)}}}

{{{highlight(red, red)}}} {{{highlight(orange, orange)}}}
{{{highlight(yellow, yellow)}}} {{{highlight(green, green)}}}
{{{highlight(blue, blue)}}} {{{highlight(purple, purple)}}}
{{{highlight(violet, violet)}}}

This information is important.

red orange yellow green blue purple violet

Lorem Ipsum macro:
{{{loremipsum}}}

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

We also use substitutions to include some of the widely used Unicode characters (like ©, converted from text characters to its typographically correct entity).

You can also evaluate code inline as follows: 1 + 1 is 1 + 1.

The source code blocks support syntax highlighting:

/*
 * Application that displays a "Hello" message to the standard output.
 */
int main(int arc, char **argv)
{
  printf("Hello, %s!\n", (argc>1) ? argv[1] : "World");
  return 0;
}

The following language strings are currently recognized:

ABC, Asymptote, Awk, C, C++, Calc, Clojure, comint, Coq, CSS, D, Ditaa, Dot (Graphviz), ebnf, Emacs Lisp, Forth, Fortran, Gnuplot, Haskell, Io, J, Java, Javascript, LaTeX, Ledger, Lilypond, Lisp, Make, Matlab, Maxima, Mscgen, Objective Caml, Octave, Org, Perl, Picolisp, PlantUML, Processing, Python, R, Ruby, Sass, Scala, Scheme, Screen, Sed, shell, Shen, SQL, SQLite, Stan, Vala, Contributed, Language, Eukleides, Fomus, Groovy, Julia, Mathematica, Mathomatic, OZ, Stata, Tcl, Emacs Package, Language, Axiom, HTML, Neo4j, Elixir, http request, iPython, Kotlin, Lisp Flavored Erlang, MongoDB, Prolog, rec, Standard ML, Google Translate and Typescript.

For inline math expressions, use the parentheses notation \(...\):

The formula \(a^2 + b^2 = c^2\) has been discovered by Pythagoras.

Let \(a=\sin(x) + \cos(x)\). Then \(a^2 = 2\sin(x)\cos(x)\) because \(\sin^2x +
\cos^2x = 1\).

The formula \(a^2 + b^2 = c^2\) has been discovered by Pythagoras.

Let \(a=\sin(x) + \cos(x)\). Then \(a^2 = 2\sin(x)\cos(x)\) because \(\sin^2x + \cos^2x = 1\).

For mathematical expressions which you want to make stand out, centered on their own lines, use \[...\]:

The /Euler theorem/:

\[
\int_0^\infty e^{-x^2} dx = {{\sqrt{\pi}} \over {2}}
\]

LaTeX allows to inline such ~\[...\]~ constructs (/quadratic formula/):
\[ \frac{-b \pm \sqrt{b^2 - 4 a c}}{2a} \]

You can include another Org file and skip its title by using the :lines argument to #+INCLUDE:

#+INCLUDE: "chapter1.org" :lines "2-"

The string fixme (in upper case) gets replaced by a "Fix Me!" image:

FIXME Delete this...

FIXME Delete this…

Index (or list of acronyms).

• Write index entries

Note that multi-entry terms generate separate index entries.

• Place the index at the desired location
• Produce the index by updating org-latex-pdf-process

The bibliography…

• Eric Steven Raymond. The Art of Unix Programming. Addison-Wesley. ISBN 0-13-142901-9.

A glossary term

The corresponding (indented) definition.

A second glossary term

The corresponding (indented) definition.