---
title: Thanks, TJ Mahr, for Reading the Pandoc Documentation!
date: '2017-11-20'
slug: thanks-tj-mahr
---

TJ Mahr [happily discovered](https://twitter.com/tjmahr/status/932721014328430592) that he got 500 reputation points on Stack Overflow today. I awarded him for reading the Pandoc documentation and [posting an answer](https://stackoverflow.com/a/47292093/559676) to an R Markdown question there.

I have encouraged R Markdown users to read [Pandoc's documentation](http://pandoc.org/MANUAL.html#pandocs-markdown) on the Markdown syntax (at least once) in both [the **bookdown** book](https://bookdown.org/yihui/bookdown/markdown-syntax.html) and [the **blogdown** book](https://bookdown.org/yihui/blogdown/output-format.html). Yes, Pandoc's documentation is lengthy, but I think it is worth the time. Sadly, some users ([for example](https://github.com/rstudio/bookdown/issues/487)) don't even read my significantly simplified version of the Pandoc documentation.

TJ's answer was quite simple, but it was worth 500 points because it saved me a little bit patience. When you have to repeat something [several times](/en/2017/10/501st-reminder/) to different users, it is easy to lose patience. Even though I think I'm pretty good at controlling my temper online now, it is still good to see that someone else has read Pandoc's documentation and pointed out the correct solution in the documentation before I have to do so.

![The documentation can save you. It is not that bad.](https://slides.yihui.org/gif/no-panic.gif)
