writingMarkdown.md

Writing in Markdown

Markdown is a quick and simple way to write formatted documents in plaintext. It is easy to read as plaintext, but is designed to convert to HTML for easy web publishing. Writing in plaintext rather than proprietary formats such as Word has many advantages:

• simple - dont waste time in complex and frustrating formatting in Word that will be deleted by publishers anyway. This keeps your distractions to a minimum.
• sharable - any device can open and read plaintext.
• preservable - markdown is plaintext which is easy for digital preservation, unlike Word.
• version controlable - you can use the full power of Git or other version control systems.

GitHub Markdown

Markdown was originally developed by Daring Fireball. However, other "flavors" of md have developed. The most popular is GitHub markdown flavor, since it can be used anywhere on GitHub.

Here are some tutorials:

• GitHub Mastering Markdown Guide
• Markdown Tutorial

Markdown editors

You can write markdown in any application that supports plaintext, i.e. a text editor. Many text editors have plugins or features to make it easier with previews of your document. However, there are also applications devoted specificially to writing in Markdown:

• Typora - live preview writing focused slick new app.
• Remarkable - code / preview split screen.
• Dillinger - in browser, nothing to install.