Markdown - The Essentials
Get started and use markdown to write documents and webpages.
Introduction #
Markdown serves as a markup language to write documents and webpages. Authors can write articles in markdown and convert those files to webpages without learning how to write code. Writers can use minimal markup to specify headings, bullet lists, and bold text.
This tutorial introduces markdown and provides ways to write text of various sizes and styles. This tutorial will detail how to use a markdown previewer engine to preview markdown. This tutorial assumes you know how to use your preferred markdown previewer and/or text editor. Markdown comes in a variety of flavors, but this tutorial covers standard markdown only.
Markdown Reference
To learn Markdown basic markdown syntax, visit this reference.
Requirements #
- markdown previewer (e.g. StackEdit)
Getting Started #
Open the markdown previewer. Locate both the editor and preview window. Open the editor.
Headings #
To create a level 1 header, prepend the text of the header with a #.
Create a level 1 header with the text "My First Header" as shown:
# My First HeaderTo create a level 2 header, prepend an extra #.
Create a level 2 header with the text "The Next Level" below the previous
header as shown:
# My First Header
## The Next LevelSeparate elements of a markdown document, including headings, with an empty line. Add an empty line below the second header.
Paragraphs #
To write a paragraph in markdown, you only need to write lines of text not separated by empty lines. The line breaks between lines in the same paragraph don't affect the line breaks in the rendered text. Below the two headers created above, add two identical paragraphs as shown:
There is
some text in this
paragraph.
There
is some text in
this paragraph.Italicized Text #
To italicize text, surround the text with * or _.
Italicize the word paragraph in the first paragraph as shown:
...
*paragraph*.
...Bold Text #
To make text bold, surround the text with ** or __.
Make the word some in the second paragraph bold as shown:
...
is **some** text in
...Bold and Italicized Text #
To make text bold and italicized, surround the text with *** or ___.
Make the word this in the second paragraph bold and italicized as shown:
...
***this*** paragraph.
...Lists #
Markdown allows for two types of lists: ordered and unordered.
Ordered Lists #
To create an ordered list, write 1. followed by a space.
Separate the list from the other elements in the document with empty lines above
and below the list.
Add an ordered list with a list of numbers one to five.
...
1. one
2. two
3. three
4. four
5. five
...Numbering Trick
Markdown automatically numbers ordered lists, so you can declare a list numbered from 1 to 5 as shown:
...
1. one
1. two
1. three
...Unordered Lists #
To create an unordered list, prepend each list item with -, +, or *.
Surround the list with empty lines to separate it from other elements in the
document.
Create an unordered list of fruits as shown:
...
- apple
- banana
- strawberry
- grape
- mango
...Conclusion #
In this tutorial, you learned how to write headings, paragraphs, bold and italicized text, and both ordered and unordered lists. They provide the framework to create most types of markdown documents. You can write an article, blog post, Reddit post, or Discord message. In addition, these features persist between formats and let you translate a blog post into a webpage and vice versa without data loss.
In future tutorials, you will learn how to add more complex elements that might not persist across types of markdown documents. For a complete reference to basic markdown syntax, visit this website.
License #
This work is licensed under CC BY 4.0.