Markdown Tutorial

Markdown is a lightweight markup language that you can use to add formatting elements to plaintext text documents.

This tutorial consists of the following lessons:

Created by John Gruber in 2004, Markdown is now one of the world's most popular markup languages. Using Markdown is different than using a WYSIWYG editor (like Microsoft Word or Google Docs). In a WYSIWYG editor, you click buttons to format words and phrases, and the changes are visible immediately. In Markdown, you use special characters (like hashes, asterisks, etc) to indicate which words and phrases should look different.

Why Use Markdown?

There are several reasons why you might want to use Markdown instead of a WYSIWYG editor:

Portability: Markdown-formatted files can be opened using virtually any application. If you decide you don't like the application you're currently using, you can move your Markdown files into another Markdown application.
Platform Independence: You can create Markdown-formatted text on any device running any operating system.
Future Proofing: Even if the application you're using stops working at some point in the future, you'll still be able to read your Markdown-formatted text using a text editor.
Web Ready: Most platforms that allow user-generated content (like GitHub, Reddit, Stack Overflow, etc) support Markdown.

How it Works

The Markdown process usually follows these steps:

Create a Markdown file using a text editor or a dedicated Markdown application. The file should have a .md or .markdown extension.
Open the Markdown file in a Markdown application.
The Markdown application converts the Markdown-formatted text to HTML (or another format).
The converted text is displayed in a web browser or another application.

In this tutorial, we'll provide a live editor where you can see the results of your Markdown code as you type it.