The markup language used to format these simple pages. See "GitHub flavored markdown" chatsheet and reference below.
What is it exactly? 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.
Using Markdown is different than using a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor. In an application like Microsoft Word, you click buttons to format words and phrases, and the changes are visible immediately. Markdown isn’t like that. When you create a Markdown-formatted file, you add Markdown syntax to the text to indicate which words and phrases should look different.
One of the most confusing aspects of using Markdown is that practically every Markdown application implements a slightly different version of Markdown. These variants of Markdown are commonly referred to as flavors. GitHub flavor references down below!
- Markdown can be used to create technical documentation, websites, ye olde essay, notes, books, presentations, emails, etc.
- Markdown can be opened using virtually any application.
- Markdown is platform independent.
- Supported all over the place, such as right here ;)
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Markdown Guide getting started: what is it?
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Markdown tutorial: Try it and learn it in a web browser.
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Read the Docs: Documentation automation application compatible with markdown.