What is markdown

Plus, have you ever tried to convert from a. For as long as plain text is the standard which it will be for a long, long time , Markdown will be usable and openable by modern programs. Compare this to Microsoft Word, which has 8 different filetypes as of Markdown does have its own filename extension:.

Markdown is the unofficial standard on popular coding sites such as GitHub. It is also the default formatting option for popular communication tools such as Skype, Slack, and to a lesser extent Facebook Messenger.

Wikipedia even uses a modified Markdown syntax they call wikitext. By submitting your email, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Markdown is a simple syntax that formats text as headers, lists, boldface, and so on. This markup language is popular, and you definitely have apps that support it. Markdown is a syntax—or, set of rules—that formats text on web pages.

To format text with HTML, you put tags around the text. Computers have no trouble reading these because they just follow the syntax the rules of HTML and apply the formatting that matches the tags.

The tags, however, make it quite difficult for humans to read HTML and understand how the text will look after the computer renders it. To use Markdown, you just apply simple tags to your text. Here are some other examples of Markdown formatting from the syntax guide :. In practice, however, almost every application including every web browser interprets it as italicized text. After you format your text, an application has to convert it to HTML, which is usually done automatically.

If you want to learn Markdown, check out the original Markdown syntax guide or a third-party tutorial site. Browse All iPhone Articles Browse All Mac Articles Do I need one? Browse All Android Articles Browse All Smart Home Articles Customize the Taskbar in Windows The implicit link name shortcut allows you to omit the name of the link, in which case the link text itself is used as the name. Because link names may contain spaces, this shortcut even works for multiple words in the link text:.

Link definitions can be placed anywhere in your Markdown document. The point is that with reference-style links, your document source is vastly more readable. By allowing you to move the markup-related metadata out of the paragraph, you can add links without interrupting the narrative flow of your prose.

You can use whichever style you prefer; the lone restriction is that the same character must be used to open and close an emphasis span. To produce a literal asterisk or underscore at a position where it would otherwise be used as an emphasis delimiter, you can backslash escape it:.

Unlike a pre-formatted code block, a code span indicates code within a normal paragraph. To include a literal backtick character within a code span, you can use multiple backticks as the opening and closing delimiters:.

This allows you to place literal backtick characters at the beginning or end of a code span:. Markdown will turn this:. Markdown uses an image syntax that is intended to resemble the syntax for links, allowing for two styles: inline and reference. Image references are defined using syntax identical to link references:.

What this means is that if you want to show the actual text of a URL or email address, and also have it be a clickable link, you can do this:. Automatic links for email addresses work similarly, except that Markdown will also perform a bit of randomized decimal and hex entity-encoding to help obscure your address from address-harvesting spambots.

For example, Markdown will turn this:. Overview Philosophy Markdown is intended to be as easy-to-read and easy-to-write as is feasible. Block Elements Paragraphs and Line Breaks A paragraph is simply one or more consecutive lines of text, separated by one or more blank lines. Headers Markdown supports two styles of headers, Setext and atx. Aliquam hendrerit mi posuere lectus. Aliquam semper ipsum sit amet velit. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit.

Vestibulum enim wisi, viverra nec, fringilla in, laoreet vitae, risus. Suspendisse id sem consectetuer libero luctus adipiscing. To that end, here are related syntax documents sorted by ease of use. I still don't understand Markdown can be written in a basic text editor don't use Word like TextEdit for Mac save as plain-text or Notepad on Windows. It's an easy way to write text that easily translates into HTML. The web is written in HTML, so think of it like quick-start web development tool for content editors.

More often than not, you'll never need to save a Markdown document, because you'll be using an online tool.