What is Markdown?

Markdown gives you an easy way to make things bold or italic or add a heading. The name Markdown is a play on “markup” which is the M in things like HTML, and it’s supposed to be a lot simpler than HTML to achieve the same styling. It was created in 2004 by John Gruber.

Instead of writing <strong>bold</strong>, you just write **bold**. Instead of <em>italic</em>, you write *italic*. It’s way faster and easier to read.

Here are the basic Markdown formatting options:

# Heading 1
## Heading 2
### Heading 3

**bold text**
*italic text*

- Bullet point 1
- Bullet point 2

1. Numbered item 1
2. Numbered item 2

[Link text](https://example.com)

![Image alt text](image.jpg)

`inline code`

```code block```

Markdown is everywhere in tech:

• README files on GitHub - Almost every open source project uses Markdown for documentation
• Documentation sites - Many documentation tools convert Markdown to web pages
• Note-taking apps - Obsidian, Notion all support Markdown
• Writing platforms - Dev.to, Hashnode, and many blogging platforms use Markdown
• Chat apps - Slack and Discord support Markdown formatting
• This site - Code Q&A uses Markdown for formatting answers

The genius of Markdown is that even if you don’t render it, it’s still readable. Compare this Markdown:

# My Project

This is **really important**.

- Feature 1
- Feature 2

To the equivalent HTML:

<h1>My Project</h1>

<p>This is <strong>really important</strong>.</p>

<ul>
  <li>Feature 1</li>
  <li>Feature 2</li>
</ul>

The Markdown version is way easier to write and read, even without rendering.

There are different “flavors” of Markdown. The most common is GitHub Flavored Markdown (GFM), which adds features like tables, task lists, and strikethrough text. But they all stick to the same basic syntax.

If you’re writing anything technical, you should learn Markdown. It takes about 10 minutes to learn the basics, and you’ll use it constantly.