So you’ve been hearing a lot about emacs’s killer feature, orgmode and how powerful and customizable it is, so you decided to give it a try. you download doom emacs but then get stuck because you are unsure of how to start. In this guide I’ll demonstrate how to use orgmode and how to get the most out of it.

Headings

Unlike markdown where you would use the pound sing # to set headings, in orgmode we use the asktrisk sign followed by a space, this would only work if you have the asktrisk at the start of the line, as per other markup languages 1 astrisk means a heading 1, 2 astrisks means a heading 2,etc.. here is how headings look in action

Headings Example
Figure 1: How headings look in action

as you can see, headings are automatically indented, and astrisks are replaced with unicode characters using the Org Superstar package. You can change the current heading hierarchy by pressing M-leftarrow or M-rightarrow when you are directly above a heading. you can also move headings along with their content across the document using M-uparrow or M-downarrow. pressing C-enter when directly above a heading will create another heading of the same hierarchy.

Emphasis

Feature orgmode markdown
Bold *text* **text**
Italic /text/ *text*
Inline Code ~code~ `code`
Highlight =text= (usually rendered in green) This feature does not exist in markdown unless you use the html tag <mark>
Underline _text_ This is also not supported in markdown unless using the html <ins> tag
Strikethrough +deleted text+ ~~deleted text~~
Quote #+begin_quote your quote #+end_quote you can also just type quote <TAB> > your quote
Hyperlinks [[Link][Description]] [Description][Link]

TIP: you can add (setq org-hide-emphasis-markers t) to your configuration, to hide markup elements in orgmode files