avatarSaurabh Sharma

Summary

The provided web content is a beginner's guide to Markdown, a lightweight markup language designed for easy formatting and conversion to multiple file formats.

Abstract

The web content serves as an introductory guide to Markdown, a versatile syntax created by John Gruber. It emphasizes the simplicity of Markdown for writing and converting text into various formats such as HTML, PDF, and Word documents. The guide highlights the benefits of Markdown, including its ease of use, platform independence, and readability. It provides examples of basic Markdown syntax, including paragraphs, headings, links, images, lists, blockquotes, code, bold, and italic text. The article also lists applications and platforms that support Markdown, such as Slack, GitHub, and static site generators, and recommends tools for writing Markdown effectively. Additionally, it offers resources for further learning, including tutorials and mini-series on Mastering Markdown.

Opinions

  • The author expresses admiration for Markdown, introduced to them by GitHub, and praises its simple syntax and powerful capabilities.
  • They suggest that Markdown can be used for nearly all writing tasks, making it a highly practical tool for writers and developers.
  • The preference for using a simple text editor for Markdown is clear, with a note of caution against using Microsoft Word.
  • The author endorses Typora and WriteApp as recommended tools for markdown editing, indicating a preference for these applications based on their features or user experience.
  • A personal recommendation is made for an AI service, ZAI.chat, as a cost-effective alternative to ChatGPT Plus (GPT-4), suggesting the author's belief in the service's value and performance.

Beginner Guide to Markdown

Let me introduce you to markdown first,

markdown logo (source Wikipedia)

Markdown is made by John Gruber, you can use markdown to write blogs, texts, books and practically 100% of your writing work in a single format and you can easily distribute it in Word, PDFs, EPUBs, HTML, and many other formats.

Some pro’s of markdown:

  • Easy and simple formatting.
  • Can be converted to tons of different formats easily.
  • Platform and app independent format. (you just need a simple text editor on any PC ever existed on this planet)
  • Pleasant syntax and easy to learn.

I was introduced to markdown by Github and after that I’m just amazed from it because of it’s simple syntax and sheer power.

Learning basic Markdown syntax:

  • Paragraphs: Everything you write are just wrapped in paragraphs. You can separate paragraphs by leaving a line between them.
Hi this is simple paragraph
and this is also the part of line.
Yeah, this is another paragraph.
  • Headings: you can create headings with number of hashes # . The more the number of hashes the lesser the power of heading.
# Main Heading 
## Sub Heading
### may be used as topic heading
#### sub-topic headings
##### another heading
###### smallest heading
  • Links: links are really important in documents and markdown’s syntax for links is great too.
I read a lot and also write some cool blogs. You can read [My blog](https://medium.com/itsjzt) here.
  • Images: everyone loves to make their text visually appealing by adding high quality images.
![Image](https://example.com/my-awesome-pic.png)

it’s just adding ! a link to make it an image.

  • lists: Actually there are 2 types of list.

1. Un-ordered List: they are made by

- first item
  some text about it.
- Second item
  some text also about it.

2. Ordered List: Items are listed with some number or counting.

1. Hello this about me.
2. I'm a great blogger.
3. I write on medium.
  • Blockquote: want to show some quotes or highlight some text to get users attention, then blockquote is what you need.
> Make it simple not simpler.  -- Albert Einstein
  • Code: you can write code samples in your markdown by using pair of `(upperticks)` you can write multi-line code with 3 pair of upperticks.
# ping on google server (bash script)
ping -t www.google.com

if you have using some sort of code highlight then adding the language name after starting upper-ticks will provide you with highlighted code.

  • Bold text: if you want to bold the text use **Bold** or __bold__ whatever you prefer, I generally prefer to use stars for bold and underscores for italics.
**bold text denoting it's something important**
__another bold text__
  • Italic text: for italic text use single underscore _italic_ or star *italic* around the text.
*italic*
_italic_

Some places where Markdown are used.

  • Slack
  • Github and Github wiki
  • Project management products like Trello
  • Blog-aware static site generators like Jekyll or Hugo

Some apps for doing markdown.

By the way, you can use your Notepad for writing markdown for any other text editor (don’t use Word). If you want to make your workflow better there are some apps made for writing markdown.

Look here to learn more Markdown.

Markdown
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Writing
Writing Tips
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