GitHub Flavored Markdown README Style Guide

Overview

This is a style guide for GitHub Flavored Markdown READMEs. It will include syntax, cleanliness, content, and layout. Please feel free to improve upon this.

Details

I have recently realized that there is no uniform style guide for GFM READMEs and I decided to ask about it on StackOverflow. They said, "Well, how about you make it, and we'll help." So here I am making it.

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Let's start with content and layout.

I have used the same layout I am going to suggest in this same README. So let's see what we've got...

Start with a title, at a header level of 1

Title

# Title # Notice the space inside the #s. Much more readable than #Title#. You'll notice this isn't as large as the first title of the README, You're not allowed to have two at that level. Still use ## ## later on, even though it is now the default size for # #, for readability.

Overview

Next should come an overview of your application. It should be short and not in great detail, simply stating what it's trying to do, and a basic idea of how it's doing it. This should be at header level 2. Notice the two # in to define it as a second level header. ## Overview ##

Details

This is where you get into the nitty-gritty of how your application works. What algorithms you're using, whose repos you forked, what libraries you're including, etc.

Installation

Here is where you would put instructions on how to install your application. If it's a bash file, we might put something like

$ curl http://github.com/user/repo > /usr/bin

This should be simple and straight forward. Notice the $ in front of system commands.

Usage

Usage comes next, which should contain instructions for using your application. For example, if my application were unix's mkdir command, I would put something like this:

$ ls
  stuff         fun_stuff
  school_stuff  pictures
$ mkdir movies
$ ls
  stuff         fun_stuff  movies
  school_stuff  pictures

Notice again the $ for when we're putting input to the command line, and the indentations (2 space, soft tabs) for the output of the function.

Acknowledgements

Now we're an open source community, so let's be nice and thank anyone who helped us out, using a bulleted list of people who helped out a lot (in no particular order)

• StackOverflow user2062950 Bulleted lists are done like so: - StackOverflow user2062950. Notice the space after the -.

Formatting