diff --git a/doc/usage/configuration.rst b/doc/usage/configuration.rst
index 02df9215d..948a9ffbc 100644
--- a/doc/usage/configuration.rst
+++ b/doc/usage/configuration.rst
@@ -2485,5 +2485,5 @@ Options for the C++ domain
 Example of configuration file
 =============================
 
-.. literalinclude:: ../_static/conf.py.txt
+.. literalinclude:: /_static/conf.py.txt
    :language: python
diff --git a/doc/usage/markdown.rst b/doc/usage/markdown.rst
index 2855eb8f2..f67b94cbd 100644
--- a/doc/usage/markdown.rst
+++ b/doc/usage/markdown.rst
@@ -1,21 +1,28 @@
 .. highlight:: python
 
+.. _markdown:
+
 ========
 Markdown
 ========
 
-`Markdown`_ is a lightweight markup language with a simplistic plain text
+`Markdown`__ is a lightweight markup language with a simplistic plain text
 formatting syntax.  It exists in many syntactically different *flavors*.  To
-support Markdown-based documentation, Sphinx can use `recommonmark`_.
-recommonmark is a Docutils bridge to `CommonMark-py`_, a Python package for
-parsing the `CommonMark`_ Markdown flavor.
+support Markdown-based documentation, Sphinx can use `recommonmark`__.
+recommonmark is a Docutils bridge to `CommonMark-py`__, a Python package for
+parsing the `CommonMark`__ Markdown flavor.
+
+__ https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/
+__ https://recommonmark.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html
+__ https://github.com/rtfd/CommonMark-py
+__ http://commonmark.org/
 
 Configuration
 -------------
 
 To configure your Sphinx project for Markdown support, proceed as follows:
 
-#. Install recommonmark::
+#. Install *recommonmark*::
 
       pip install recommonmark
 
@@ -26,18 +33,15 @@ To configure your Sphinx project for Markdown support, proceed as follows:
          '.md': 'recommonmark.parser.CommonMarkParser',
       }
 
-   You can replace `.md` with a filename extension of your choice.
+   You can replace ``.md`` with a filename extension of your choice.
 
 #. Add the Markdown filename extension to the  ``source_suffix`` configuration
    variable::
 
       source_suffix = ['.rst', '.md']
 
-#. You can further configure recommonmark to allow custom syntax that standard
-   CommonMark doesn't support. Read more in the `recommonmark documentation
-   <shttp://recommonmark.readthedocs.io/en/latest/auto_structify.html>`__.
+#. You can further configure *recommonmark* to allow custom syntax that
+   standard *CommonMark* doesn't support. Read more in the `recommonmark
+   documentation`__.
 
-.. _Markdown: https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/
-.. _recommonmark: https://recommonmark.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html
-.. _CommonMark-py: <https://github.com/rtfd/CommonMark-py>
-.. _CommonMark: http://commonmark.org/
+__ https://recommonmark.readthedocs.io/en/latest/auto_structify.html