In the ever-evolving digital landscape, crafting clear and concise content is more crucial than ever. But have you ever felt bogged down by clunky formatting tools or frustrated with endless copy-pasting between writing platforms?
Enter Markdown, a revolutionary yet straightforward markup language that empowers you to write beautifully formatted text without the hassle.
What’s Markdown
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 world’s most popular markup languages.
Why Markdown is Magical?
Markdown’s magic lies in its simplicity. It uses plain text characters and symbols to define formatting elements like headings, bold text, italics, and lists. This eliminates the need for complex menus or endless buttons, allowing you to focus on your content.
There are endless guides all over internet on how to write using markdown syntax (reference links at end of article). Here are the basics you need to know in three crisp precise points
| Syntax | Description |
|---|---|
| # | For heading |
| - | For bullet points |
 | for Image |
Is it really that simple?
Of course not, I had to over simplify it to make a point but this should be sufficient to get 70% of job done.
Modern text processors like OneNote and MS Word offer a vast array of formatting options, letting you create visually stunning documents with a click of a button. They’ve become incredibly powerful, thanks to advancements in hardware and processing power. But that power comes at a cost - complexity.
Markdown on other hand is simple plain text.
This entire blog article is written in markdown
Why have I not heard about Markdown before?
Markdown has taken the digital world by storm, praised for its simplicity and efficiency. But despite its undeniable strengths, it hasn’t quite achieved universal popularity. Particularly for non-technical users, Markdown can present a bit of a hurdle. Here is why:
- Learning curve: symbols and codes are complicated compared to menus and buttons
- GUI Tools: Unlike WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editors like MS Word, Markdown offers no live preview of formatting (generally)
- Limited Design Options: Markdown excels at basic formatting, but complex layouts or design elements are beyond its scope (by design)
- Niche appeal: while its powerful for developers and IT engineers, Markdown core functionality does not resonate with everyone (yet!)
How to bridge that gap?
Did you know? Popular chat apps like Teams, Zoom, Slack and WhatsApp allow you to use Markdown for basic formatting within your messages.
This is how one can overcome most of the above listed challenges,
- Learning Curve and GUI Tools: Several tool overs menu/buttons and gui interface to build markdown text. This significantly helps understand markdown syntax and ease transition.
- Limited Design Options: There are several extended Markdown Syntax to address some of design challenges and introduce new design elements like callouts and foldable content.
- Only for Developers: This is no longer valid as more and more applications are incorporating markdown syntax and formatting in their tools.
So how do one get started?
- Start Small: You don’t need advanced editors and software to get started. Begin with an online Markdown editor to familiarize yourself with the basics. There are numerous such editors available; my personal favorite is Dillinger
- Choose an Editor: There are several WYSIWYG editors you can install on your device that make it easy to learn Markdown syntax. The syntax is so simple that you will quickly become accustomed to using Markdown, even in Notepad. My personal favorite is Obsidian.
- Keep Practicing: I use Markdown for everything, including personal notes, meeting minutes, project notes, to-do lists, and journaling. It’s a lightweight, versatile format that’s easy to move across different platforms. The best part is that I’m not tied to any specific software or concerned about potential subscription fees for accessing my data.
Keep following this blog for more markdown related tips and tricks. See you in next one!