# Use cell magics
<a name="notebooks-spark-magics-cell-magics"></a>

Magics that are written on several lines are preceded by a double percent sign (`%%`) and are called cell magic functions or cell magics.

## %%sql
<a name="notebooks-spark-magics-sql"></a>

This cell magic allows to run SQL statements directly without having to decorate it with Spark SQL statement. The command also displays the output by implicitly calling `.show()` on the returned dataframe.

![\[Using %%sql.\]](http://docs.aws.amazon.com/athena/latest/ug/images/notebooks-spark-magics-1.png)


The `%%sql` command auto truncates column outputs to a width of 20 characters. Currently, this setting is not configurable. To work around this limitation, use the following full syntax and modify the parameters of the `show` method accordingly. 

```
spark.sql("""YOUR_SQL""").show(n=number, truncate=number, vertical=bool)
```
+ **n** `int`, optional. The number of rows to show.
+ **truncate** – `bool` or `int`, optional – If `true`, truncates strings longer than 20 characters. When set to a number greater than 1, truncates long strings to the length specified and right aligns cells.
+ **vertical** – `bool`, optional. If `true`, prints output rows vertically (one line per column value).