Formatting in iA Writer Pro

Writer allows you to format your text without needing a mouse, merely by typing a few simple characters. It’s familiar, and it’s also subtly formatted on-screen with Writer’s Auto Markdown.

An iA Writer Pro document with basic Markdown formatting. This includes formatting for emphasis, importance, headings, lists, quotes, links, code, and more.

You can see the formatting via iA Writer Pro’s Preview (View ➤ Show Preview). For more on the Preview window, see this help topic: Preview Formatting.

iA Writer Pro’s floating Preview window (View ➤ Show Preview), showing a formatted preview of the same document.

Copying from the Preview window lets you paste formatted text into other apps. Exported documents contain this formatting, and you can choose to print formatting as well.

You can apply formatting via the following methods:

iA Writer Pro’s Format menu, showing formatting commands, together with the Format section of the Sidebar.

You can also see a formatted preview of iA Writer Pro documents using Apple’s QuickLook (select the document in the Finder then press Space).

For more information on the Sidebar, see this help topic: iA Writer Pro’s Sidebar.

For a cheatsheet of supported Markdown formatting, see this help topic: Markdown Formatting.

For more detail on the formatting iA Writer Pro supports, please read our knowledge base article Markdown syntax reference guide.