What is a Markdown format?

Markdown format uses text codes to indicate divisions of content, visual decorations, embedded objects like images, which is different from Markup languages that use tags.

  • Headings start with #
  • Bold text surrounded by double asterisks and Italic text surrounded by a single asterisk
  • Links use a formula [link-address](link-display-text)
  • The list starts with dashes or asterisks
  • We can use any text editor to work with markdown, but ReText text editor makes it easy with live preview.

People use it for creating websites, documents, notes, books, presentations, email messages, and technical documentation.

Benefits of using Markdown formatting

  • Simplicity: Simple by nature and doesn’t have too much syntax to remember
  • Features: Has more advanced features like footnotes.
  • Platform support: Supported in all text editors and CMS where we type markdown directly into a web page

Examples

  • Readme file “README.md” on Git repositories, where file extension “md” stands for markdown

Markdown syntax

If you want to learn Markdown syntax, refer to the below link

Here is a sample markdown format file content

# Heading level 1
## Heading level 2
### Heading level 3
#### Heading level 4
##### Heading level 5
###### Heading level 6

# Paragraph
This is a paragraph with some **bold** and *italic* texts.

# Unordered List
- item 1
- item 2
- item 3

# Ordered List
1. item 1
2. item 2
3. item 3

# Blockquote
> Dorothy followed her through many of the beautiful rooms in her castle.

# Link
[Random Codez Website](https://randomcodez.com)

# Image
![image](https://via.placeholder.com/150)

Overall

Markdown format uses text codes instead of tags to format documents.