- Hello!
And welcome back to Thomas Frank explains
in this Notion Fundamentals lesson
we are talking all about how to edit
and format your text inside of Notion.
You're gonna learn
how to quickly apply formatting
at the speed of thought
using markdown,
and also use some of the other tricks
notion provides for you
such as their keyboard shortcuts
their editing tool bar
that comes up when you highlight text
and you'll even learn
some cool tricks you can use
with notions slash command.
Fittingly, we're going to take the example page
we created in the last lesson, bring it over here
and add some of these formatting tricks to it.
So we create a more full featured page.
So if you want to
get the resources for this course
including the example template
that you can download and start editing,
go over to thomasJfrank.com/fundamentals.
That is the homepage for this course.
There you're going to find written versions
of every single lesson,
along with all those supplemental materials
that you can start using to work alongside me.
With all that being said,
let's dive into the lesson.
(lively music)
- Okay. So as you can see on the screen here
we have quite a few different ways
of formatting text in notion.
This isn't all of them
but it is a good sampling here.
And as I mentioned in the intro,
you've got several different ways
to achieve this formatting.
One of which is called Markdown.
What is Markdown?
I did put that here in the title.
Well Markdown, as I'm going to explain
in more detail in a second
is a way to format text as you type in Notion,
It's really cool.
So for example, I can start typing
and I can bold text on the fly.
I can even italicize it.
I can make headers,
or I can even make bullet lists.
And the way that I can do this
is by using Markdown.
So what is Markdown?
Well, as you can see here
from this little demonstration
Markdown is a method for me
to add little formatting syntax to my text,
which actually formats that text on the fly
or at least it does in Notion.
Traditionally, Markdown was syntax
that was added in plain text.
And then you run that plain text through
either a script or some kind of preview window
in a Markdown editor to see your formatting.
And I'll give you an example here by looking
at a more traditional
Markdown editor called Dillinger.
There are a lot of these out here
but Dillinger's an interesting one we can look at
and you can find it over at Dillinger.io
if you're curious,
but this is what you usually see
in a more traditional markdown editor.
You've got on the left here
an editing window where we write all
of our syntax in plain text.
And then over here,
we have a preview window where
we actually see our formatting.
We see our headers, we see our bolding.
We see our bullet lists, all that good stuff.
I can't edit this.
So I have to do my editing over here.
And the purpose of this is two fold.
Number one, you can edit your text
and add your formatting
in literally any program, Notepad
a code editor like Atom,
a Markdown editor like Dillinger.
Anything that can let you write plain text
and save plain text Markdown files is fair game
for editing Markdown files.
And then traditionally
you would throw it through some sort
of script or export from a Markdown editor
and you'd get your nice fancy formatting.
Notion does things a little bit differently.
Notion has a Markdown editor,
but it's a what you see is what you get
Markdown editor
or a WYSIWYG editor.
So when I apply my formatting,
like if I want to make something italic like this
it just instantly becomes italic.
And that's really nice.
One thing that's useful to know
is that if you copy plain texts
that has Markdown formatting
so let's just copy all this text
and you paste that into Notion for the most part
that formatting is going to be respected.
So if I just paste this here
you're going to see
that all the formatting is there.
We've got bolding.
We have a heading,
we have a block quote.
We have some list elements here.
So if you have Markdown
that you've written elsewhere
you can paste it the right into notion
and you're going to see that formatting.
But what I want to show you how to do is actually
write Markdown syntax within Notion.
So you get used to it and you can actually
start formatting your texts using it on the fly.
So the first thing that I want to show you is
a reference page that I created.
So if you're on the
thomasjfrank.com/fundamentals homepage,
and you get over to this
Notion fundamentals course hub
here in Notion you can come to
this writing system lesson page here
and we've got a Notion of Markdown reference.
You're also going to see this Markdown reference
in the blog post version of this lesson.
But this one is here in notion
and you can copy it into your own workspace
if you want a reference of your own.
So these are all the different things
that you can do
in Notion using Markdown,
you can create different levels of headings
using the pound key.
You can italicize text
you can bold text
add strike throughs, do pre formatting
and you can also use Markdown formatting to
create some different types of blocks.
We're going to talk about this
more thoroughly in the next lesson about blocks
but in Notion you have text blocks
but you also have other kinds of blocks.
So an unordered list,
that's a specific type of block.
An order list is a specific type of block.
I think it's called a numbered list
here in Notion
To Do's are blocks,
block quotes are blocks,
toggle blocks are blocks,
but,
instead of having to use the slash command
and pick them for these types of blocks
there is a very quick Markdown shortcut that you
can just type and create them.
So that's really nice.
But Markdown
is not the only option that you have.
There are also
a few other ways to format texts in Notion
and we're going to cover those now.
So let's go over to this other formatting page
where you're going to see I have
a plain text version
of this little article that I had written
in Dillinger before.
And if you want to start formatting things
you don't have to use markdown.
There are quite a few other ways to do it
for one you can simply use
your typical keyboard shortcuts.
So for example,
if I highlight this text right here
and I hit control or command B,
I'm going to bold that text.
If I come over here
to 'find yourself sleeping too late'
and hit CTRL + I
that's going to be italicized.
If I want to come down here
and for some reason I want to underline
and I can do CTRL + U
and that text is going to be underlined.
So there are a lot of keyboard shortcuts.
We cannot go over all of them in this video
because there are a lot.
So what I will let you know is that there is a
learn the shortcuts page and the official Notion
documentation I'll have that link in the written
version of this video.
And there is a whole list of different keyboard
shortcuts that you can start learning.
A lot of these are going to be very useful for
navigating your workspace.
For example, my favorite one
is probably the CTRL + brackets
going back and forward throughout my workspace.
But there are also quite a few keyboard shortcuts
for applying formatting to your texts.
So that's useful to know.
You can also use this little edit toolbar
that comes up when you highlight texts.
So I'm going to highlight this line.
I got this whole edit toolbar here
and I can do quite a lot with this.
I can add comments.
I can add links, but I can also apply formatting.
So if I want to bold this,
if I want to italicize it
I can do all of that.
I could even turn it into
a code block or an equation
but what I really want to do with this is turn it
into a heading.
And just like with bullet lists, numbered lists
headings are their own type of blocks.
So I'm going to go over here
and change this from text into Heading 1.
And I know earlier from pasting this in,
that this right here needs to be a Heading 2.
So we can go down here
and turn this into a Heading 2.
So you can use that edit toolbar to do a lot
of different formatting things
that you could also do
with keyboard shortcuts or Markdown.
Now, one little trick that
I didn't plan on showing you in this video,
but I might as well
is turning multiple blocks into something else.
So I know this Water, Sunlight, Movement.
I want that to be a numbered list.
So if I highlight all of these blocks,
you're going to see all the blocks got selected
not just the text.
Then I can go to this little button here
and I can turn these into a numbered list.
So that is a way to transform a block.
And the other way
that you can start formatting text is
by using these slash command.
Now we're going to talk about this
much more in detail in the next lesson,
but if you type slash in Notion
you get this menu where you can insert all kinds
of different blocks,
it is probably the Notion feature
you're going to be using more than any other
once you get used to it.
But we can also do with the slash command is
turn existing blocks
into something else.
And there are
a couple different things you can do
in terms of texts, formatting along these lines.
So up here, I remember that this line right here
was not supposed to be underlined,
but it was supposed to be a bullet list item.
So if I just click anywhere in this block
and I type slash and then I started typing turn,
and then I'm going to get this turn into menu.
I can also simply type slash
and I can scroll way, way, way, way down
and find it
it's going to be right here.
But it's so much easier to just type slash turn.
And then I've got
all these different options here.
So I can scroll to pick one.
I can use my arrow keys arrow down, or
If I just keep typing,
like Turn bul for bulleted list
I'm going to eventually highlight
the one that I want.
And then I can just hit enter to turn that
into a bulleted list.
So I could do that for all these, if I want to.
And now I've got my bulleted list.
I'm going to go and tab that one in
and we are good to go.
Another cool thing you can do
with the slash command is add color
or background color to a block.
So let's make this
a little bit more stylish by typing red.
And you're going to see,
I get the color red as my first thing
but if I type space B
then it's going to assume I want the background.
And I've got all these different
background options here.
So if I click that,
now I've formatted that with red.
So using what we know now,
let's go over to our sample page
which is we're going to call it sample page stage two
and start adding some formatting.
Remember in the first lesson
we had this very very simple text page
but now we're going to want
to actually add some few things.
So I know that
a book title needs to be italicized.
So I can go ahead
and add my asterisks on either side
of that word
and boom, it is going to become italicized.
The sky above the port
was the color of television.
That's a quote.
So if I just come to the beginning of this line
and type a quote and space
I'm going to turn that into a block quote.
I know I have a couple of other things here.
So Matrix, Ghost in the Shell,
Cyberpunk 2077, Deus Ex.
I'm going to go ahead and hit Command + I
to italicize all those
and coming down here,
we have read, watch and consume widely.
I know that's actually a heading,
so I'm going to go ahead
and do pound pound to create an H two
and break up my article a little bit.
And with this one,
why don't we just do type red B to
give you a red background, just because,
Oh we've got ARPANET down here.
Well, it doesn't really need pre formatted texts
but I think it'll look cooler
if I give it pre format of text.
Maybe also want to come up here
and add another H 2 at the top
for introduction and a little preview
from the next week's lesson,
but I'm gonna go ahead
and put a table of contents there and look
it finds all my headings
and I can easily click
and zoom to specific headings,
which is pretty sweet.
So we have now gone from a very simple text
only page to a much more nicely formatted page
where we can parse the text
a little bit more easier.
It looks a bit more interesting.
And that's going to allow us to go
into the next lesson
to start adding multimedia elements
and additional blocks.
Alright.
So that's about going to do it for this lesson.
Hopefully you found this helpful
and hopefully all the markdown formatting tricks
and the other tricks we talked about.
Keyboard shortcuts, everything in this lesson
is going to help you get a little bit closer
to being able to write
and take notes
and generally get content into Notion
at the speed of thought.
That's a really foundational concept here,
because if you want to make notion a second brain
or build it into an all-in-one productivity system,
then you want to cut down
as much as possible on the friction it takes
to get things in to that system.
As always, you can go
over to Thomasjfrank.com/fundamentals
which is the homepage
for this free Notion course.
And there you're going to be able to,
well, number one get written versions
of every single lesson as they release.
And this one may be especially helpful
because it does have that Markdown
reference table in it.
You're also going to be able to get all the
supplemental information
and resources for this course.
There'll be templates, that'd be example pages.
It will be reference pages within notion.
So check all those out
and you'll have the opportunity to get
on my notion tips, email list
where I will let you know
when new videos go live here
on Thomas Frank explains
and also send you additional notion tips.
In the next lesson, we were talking about blocks
which is one of the other
foundational features in Notion
you got pages and you got blocks.
So that is going to be one
of the most important lessons in this course.
Hopefully, I will see you there.
As always, If you have questions,
I'm on Twitter @tomfrankly
ask me over there
or ask me in the comment section down below
and I'll do my best to answer them.
See you in the next lesson.
(upbeat music)