Simplified Writing — A Markdown Tutorial

5 min readSep 21, 2015

Learn markdown to simplify your writing/publishing workflow.

What is markdown?

Markdown converts easily to formatted HTML which makes it a great tool for writing/publishing.

In addition to the original version, there are several markdown variations. Examples include:

To help with standardization, there is a markdown specification known as CommonMark.

It’s easy to learn
Significantly speeds up writing/publishing workflow
Can be created, edited and stored on a variety of platforms and devices because it’s plain text
Is a supported format on an increasing number of writing tools and services

I use markdown to:

In the interest of time, I’ll only highlight some of the most commonly used markdown elements:

Begin paragraph text at the left margin.
Separate paragraphs from other markdown elements (including other paragraphs) with one or more blank lines.
Lines of text within a paragraph are continuous. To separate lines within the same paragraph, add two space characters to the end of the previous line.

Text emphasis can be inserted inline and does not need to begin at the left margin.
Create emphasis by surrounding text with special symbols.

To display text as Bold, surround text in:

To display text as Italics, surround text in:

To display text in Bold Italics, surround text in:

To display text as “Strikethrough”, surround text in:

There are six levels of headings possible in markdown.
Begin headings at the left margin.
Create a heading by entering the # symbol followed by a space character and the heading text.
Enter the number of # symbols per heading level.

Begin a blockquote at the left margin.
Create a blockquote by entering a > symbol followed by a space character and the blockquote text.
Blockquotes can also be nested by entering consecutive > symbols.

Markdown supplies both Ordered and Unordered lists.

Ordered List:

Begin an ordered list item at the left margin.
Enter the list item number followed by a . symbol followed by a space character and the item text. Each list item can also be numbered with 1.and the correct list number will be displayed.
Lists can be nested by including a two space character indention.

Unordered List:

Images can be inserted inline and do not need to begin at the left margin.
Add images by entering a ! symbol followed by the image alt text enclosed in [] symbols followed by the full url of the image enclosed in () symbols.

Example: ![Image Alt Text](http://someimageurl)

Begin a table at the left margin.
Tables can be created by adding pipe dividers (| symbol) between each table cell.
Table Header vs Table Body — separate the table header row from table body rows by adding a row of cells containing dashes.
Text Alignment Within Table Column — include colon : symbols within the dash row to define left-aligned, right-aligned, or center-aligned text in table body cells.
Inline Markdown — table cell text can include inline markdown such as Links and Text Emphasis (see corresponding elements above).

Code snippets can be included in markdown.
Inline Code — wrap inline code with back tick ` symbols.
Indented Code — indent code blocks with 4 space characters.
Fenced Code Blocks — wrap code with back tick``` symbols to create a multi-line block of code.