Writing in Markdown

“Markdown” refers to a technique or practice for writing documents that can be used in any text editor (we’ll use Zettlr). It is not a piece of software on its own, but is instead something called a “markup language”–i.e. a language used to “markup” text in order to define its structure and style.

A simple markdown document (with the extension *.md) might look something like this:

# My First Section

This is a description of the section.

## A subsection

This is some further text. Words can appear in **bold** font.

## A second subsection

A list of things:

- one
- two
- three

While this document will look a little strange at first, with a bit of practice you’ll quickly get used to the intuitive way that Markdown structures your documents with minimal styling–leaving you free to focus on the ideas you are developing through writing.

Markdown includes about a dozen rules that you need to follow quite strictly in order to produce good results. Don’t be afraid to go slowly at first, you’ll be able to write much more rapidly as you become familiar with the rules. To get acquainted with markdown, please read this guide to the basic syntax. Bookmark or download this page for easy reference later.