diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index 41f088277..4d36ce9a9 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -17,29 +17,29 @@ Archiva Development
 
 To get involved in Archiva development, contact dev@archiva.apache.org.
 
-NOTE: you will need a MAVEN_OPTS with some memory setup as sample :
-export MAVEN_OPTS="-Xmx768m -Xms768m -XX:MaxPermSize=256m"
+NOTE: you will need a `MAVEN_OPTS` with some memory setup as sample:  
+`export MAVEN_OPTS="-Xmx768m -Xms768m -XX:MaxPermSize=256m"`
 
 Running from Source Code
 ========================
 
 As webapp js is in dev and won't probably be released soon, the module is not activated by default and it's included only in a profile
-mvn jetty:run -pl :archiva-webapp -am  (to save fingers :-) use sh ./jetty.sh ) (debug with sh ./jetty-debug.sh debug port 8000)
+`mvn jetty:run -pl :archiva-webapp -am`  (to save fingers :-) use `sh ./jetty.sh` ) (debug with `sh ./jetty-debug.sh`, debug port is 8000)
 
 
 hit your browser: http://localhost:9091/archiva/index.html
 
 Test Registration email
 ========================
-Redback can send email on registration by default the mail jndi si configured to use localhost.
-You can use your gmail accout for testing purpose
-In your ~/.m2/settings.xml add a property with a path to a tomcat context file:
-```
+Redback can send email on registration. By default the mail jndi si configured to use localhost.
+You can use your gmail accout for testing purpose.
+In your **~/.m2/settings.xml** file add a property with a path to a tomcat context file:
+```xml
 <tomcatContextXml>/Users/olamy/dev/tomcat-context-archiva-gmail.xml</tomcatContextXml>
 ```
 This file must contains:
 
-```
+```xml
 <Context path="/archiva">
   <Resource name="jdbc/users" auth="Container" type="javax.sql.DataSource"
             username="sa"
@@ -63,14 +63,17 @@ This file must contains:
 Using with cassandra as metadata storage
 ========================
 You can run the application using cassandra as storage.
+
+```shell
 sh ./jetty.sh -Pcassandra
+```
 
 Default cassandra host is localhost and port 9160
 
 You can override using:
 
- * -Dcassandra.host=
- * -Dcassandra.port=
+ * `-Dcassandra.host=`
+ * `-Dcassandra.port=`