What is Markdown and How to Use It

Markdown is a lightweight markup language that you can use to add formatting elements to plaintext text documents. Created by John Gruber in 2004, Markdown is now one of the most popular markup languages.

Markdown is widely used in blogging, instant messaging, online forums, collaborative software, documentation pages, and readme files. It is supported in many content management systems (CMSs) and static site generators (SSGs). For example, Markdown is the default markup language in WordPress, Drupal, and GitHub. It is also used in platforms like Reddit, Discord, and Slack.

Markdown Syntax Example

---

h1 Heading

h2 Heading

h3 Heading

h4 Heading

h5 Heading

h6 Heading

Horizontal Rules

---

---

---

Typographic replacements

Enable typographer option to see result.

(c) (C) (r) (R) (tm) (TM) (p) (P) +-

test.. test… test… test?… test!…

!!!!!! ???? ,, — ---

“Smartypants, double quotes” and ‘single quotes’

Emphasis

This is bold text

This is bold text

This is italic text

This is italic text

Strikethrough

Blockquotes

Blockquotes can also be nested…

…by using additional greater-than signs right next to each other…

…or with spaces between arrows.

Lists

Unordered

• Create a list by starting a line with +, -, or *
• Sub-lists are made by indenting 2 spaces:
  • Marker character change forces new list start:
  • Ac tristique libero volutpat at
    • Facilisis in pretium nisl aliquet
  • Nulla volutpat aliquam velit
• Very easy!

Ordered

1. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet

2. Consectetur adipiscing elit

3. Integer molestie lorem at massa

4. You can use sequential numbers…

5. …or keep all the numbers as 1.

Start numbering with offset:

57. foo
58. bar

Code

Inline code

Indented code

// Some comments line 1 of code line 2 of code line 3 of code

Block code “fences”

Sample text here...

Syntax highlighting

var foo = function (bar) {
  return bar++;
};

console.log(foo(5));

Tables

Option	Description
data	path to data files to supply the data that will be passed into templates.
engine	engine to be used for processing templates. Handlebars is the default.
ext	extension to be used for dest files.

Right aligned columns

Option	Description
data	path to data files to supply the data that will be passed into templates.
engine	engine to be used for processing templates. Handlebars is the default.
ext	extension to be used for dest files.

Links

link text

link with title

Autoconverted link https://github.com/nodeca/pica (enable linkify to see)

Images

Like links, Images also have a footnote style syntax

With a reference later in the document defining the URL location:

Plugins

The killer feature of markdown-it is very effective support of syntax plugins.

Emojies

Classic markup: 🤑

Shortcuts (emoticons): :-) :-( 8-) ;)

see how to change output with twemoji.

Subscript / Superscript

• 19^th^
• H2O

<ins>

++Inserted text++

<mark>

==Marked text==

Footnotes

Footnote 1 link¹.

Footnote 2 link².

Duplicated footnote reference².

Footnotes

1. Footnote can have markup

   and multiple paragraphs. ↩

2. Footnote text. ↩ ↩²

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