* Formatting text
** Simple formatting
You can apply simple formatting to your text by enclosing words in
special characters. These include
 - /italicised text/
 - *bold text*
 - _underlines_
 - =literal text=
 - ~code~ (generally appears the same as literal text)

* Formatting text
** Simple formatting
You can apply simple formatting to your text by enclosing words in
special characters. These include
 - /italicised text/
 - *bold text*
 - _underlines_
 - =literal text=
 - ~code~ (generally appears the same as literal text)

** Formatted blocks of text
For longer pieces of text you can enclose the text in blocks marking
it as a specific sort of text. I commonly use these ones

#+BEGIN_EXAMPLE
This is an example block into which you can type text that you don't want org to mess with like a [[link]]. This will typically be rendered in a monospace font when exported.
#+END_EXAMPLE

#+BEGIN_QUOTE
This block encloses text that you want to appear as a quotation.
#+END_QUOTE

#+BEGIN_CENTER
This text will be centred when it is exported.
#+END_CENTER

You can save time typing out the block wrapper by using shortcuts. Go
to the start of a new line and type <e and press TAB and it will
expand to an example block. The same works for <q for quote and <c for
centre.

** LaTeX
Org-mode does a good job of understanding snippets of LaTeX (a
[[https://www.latex-project.org/][powerful typesetting language]] used in scientific and other technical
documents). For example, it will correctly export simple superscripts
x^2 or subscripts x_0 or symbols like \alpha, \beta, \gamma.

Org also understands more complex LaTeX like this

\begin{eqnarray}
x^2 + \left(\frac{y}{z}\right)^4 = 0
\end{eqnarray}

but for longer bits of LaTeX it is better to use a LaTeX block. You
start one with <l and TAB

#+BEGIN_LaTeX
LaTeX code goes here
#+END_LaTeX

** Source code blocks
It is also handy to include source code in your notes - on a new line
type <s and TAB to create a source block. You can tell org what type
of code is contained - in this case we'll put in some simple shell
code, so well put "sh" at the top of the block.

#+BEGIN_SRC sh
  echo "Hello $USER! Today is `date`"
  exit
#+END_SRC

You can get org to syntax highlight the text in the block by adding
the following to your [[http://pragmaticemacs.com/emacs/editing-your-emacs-config-file/][emacs config file]] (without the source block
wrapper of course).

#+BEGIN_SRC elisp
;;syntax highlight code blocks
(setq org-src-fontify-natively t)
#+END_SRC

What is more, when the cursor is inside a SRC block, you can use C-c '
to create a new temporary buffer in the major mode of the programming
language you have specified. Type some code in, and then type C-c '
again to come back to this buffer.

** Executing source code blocks
Org-mode can execute your source code blocks and add the output to
your file. This part of org-mode is called babel. I'll write more
about this later, but it is too cool not to mention here.

For example, take the simple code block we had above:

#+BEGIN_SRC sh
  echo "Hello $USER! Today is `date`"
  exit
#+END_SRC

Put the cursor inside the block and hit C-c C-c to execute it. You
will be asked to confirm and then you should see the output appear
like this:

#+RESULTS:
#+begin_example
Hello bjm! Today is Fri 25 Sep 2015 15:03:12 BST
#+end_example

You can do much more with this, like reading input data from a table
in the same file, creating images that appear in the file, extracting
(tangling) all the code snippets into one or more files to be executed
separately, and much more. [[http://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/babel/intro.html][Here are some nice examples]].

You can tell org-mode which programming languages to support by adding
something like the following to your [[http://pragmaticemacs.com/emacs/editing-your-emacs-config-file/][emacs config file]]:

#+BEGIN_SRC elisp
;; Some initial languages we want org-babel to support
(org-babel-do-load-languages
 'org-babel-load-languages
 '(
   (sh . t)
   (python . t)
   (R . t)
   (ditaa . t)
   (perl . t)
   (gnuplot t)
   ))
#+END_SRC