Markdown is a way to write content for the web. It’s written in what people call “plaintext,” the text you’re used to writing and seeing. Plaintext is just the regular alphabet, with familiar symbols, like asterisks ( * ) and hashtags ( # ).
Here is a quick cheat sheet to get you started!
Italics and Bold:
To make a phrase italic in Markdown, you can surround words with an underscore (_ ).
For example, _Hello_would become Hello.
Similarly, to bold phrases in Markdown, you can surround words with two asterisks ( ** ).
**Hello** turns into Hello
Make Words Both Bold AND italics.
To make the phrase, “Hello, how are you,” bold and italic, write it as follows: **_Hello how are you_**. I placed the asterisks first to make them more legible. Generally, it doesn't matter in which order you put the asterisks or underscores.
Headers:
Headers are frequently used on websites, magazine articles, and notices. Their purpose is to draw attention to a specific section. They act like titles or subtitles above sections.
There are six types of headers in decreasing sizes:
This is header one
This is header two
This is header three
This is header four
This is header five
This is header six
To make headers in Markdown, you preface the phrase with a hash mark (#). You place the same number of hash marks as your desired header size. For example, for a header one, you'd use one hash mark (# Header One), while for a header three, you'd use three (### Header Three).
Inline Links:
Inline links—conventionally blue, underlined words—are usually hyperlinked to guide users to another webpage containing related information.
To create an inline link, you wrap the link text in brackets ( [ ] ), and then you wrap the link in parenthesis ( ( ) ). For example, to create a hyperlink to www.pse.com with a link text that says, Visit Puget Sound Energy!, you'd write this in Markdown: [Visit Puget Sound Energy!]( www.pse.com)
And you would create this: Visit Puget Sound Energy!
Summary:
Markdown is an easy and lightweight markup language that can be used to write content for the Web and add formatting elements to plaintext text documents.
“Learning never exhausts the mind.”
― Leonardo da Vinci