Markdown

An overview of the powerful formatting language.

Markdown is a ubiquitous and incredibly useful tool. If it was to be considered a programming language it would be among the worlds most popular, but it is beneficial to developers and business folks alike. So, what is it really, and what can you use it for?

The definition from the Markdown website says:

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

What this boils down to is that it is a set of rules that allow formatting of markdown documents by two different sources: Text Editors, and Markdown Applications. Here is a sample markdown file:

Markdown Rules

The ‘rules’ of markdown are the set of annotations that you can add to your document to get the desired formatting from both text editors and markdown applications.

1. A large header can be denoted by # Header 1
2. A medium header can be created with # Header 2
3. Bold text is denoted by **Bold Text***
4. To add a link, simply add [link title text](www.thelinkaddress.com)
5. For a table, you can add headers and columns like so:

| Name | Date of Birth |