Text Formatting in Lyssna
In order to make your instructions or questions more readable and structured, Lyssna provides you with some basic text formatting options. By using a language called Markdown you can make some text bold, italic, or even create lists.
Markdown Basics
Markdown allows you to change the appearance of a block of text by prepending or surrounding it with some special character. The different formatting options available in Lyssna and the special characters associated with them are listed below:
One underscore for italic text: If you want to make some text italic, wrap it within single underscores _like this_. The same result can also be achieved by wrapping text with *one asterisk* on each side.
Two asterisks for bold text: If you want to make some text bold, wrap it within double asterisks **like this**. The same result can also be achieved by wrapping text with __two underscores__ on each side.
One dash for bulleted list: To make an unordered list, you can start a sequence of lines with a single dash followed by a space. You can also create nested lists by adding two - or more - spaces before the dash at the start of the line. Below is an example of how to create a list:
- This is the first item of my list - This is the second item of my list - This item will be nested - And so will this one - This last item will line up with the first two items of the list
Markdown in Instructions
Instructions support a limited amount of formatting. Namely, only bold and italic text. The reason for this is that most instructions are displayed in place of a title and are not meant to span across multiple lines or contain several paragraphs.
Below is an example of an instruction containing Markdown...
... and the result, as seen by a person completing your test:
Markdown in Questions
Questions can benefit from the full set of formatting options we mentioned so far. In addition, you can also create paragraphs by inserting an empty line between two blocks of text, as shown below:
This is my first paragraph. Paragraphs can span across multiple lines if needed. The only way to start a new paragraph is to leave an empty line before entering more text.
This will be a different paragraph. Different paragraphs are separated from each other by some space. Paragraphs are handy if you have a very long text that needs to be broken down for clarity.
Below is an example of a question containing Markdown...
...and the result, as seen by a person completing your test:
This also works within multiple choice answers for your questions:
...and this is what the participant sees when taking your test:
