Markdown (MD)

Markdown is a lightweight markup language that is used to format text and create documents. It was created in 2004 by John Gruber and Aaron Swartz as a way to make it easier for people to write and read plain text documents. Markdown is often used for formatting readme files, writing messages in online discussion forums, and creating rich text using a plain text editor.

Markdown is designed to be easy to read and write, even when not converted into HTML or other formats. It uses punctuation characters and other symbols to indicate formatting such as bold, italic, headers, lists, links, images, code blocks, blockquotes, and more. Markdown can be written in any text editor or word processor that supports plain text.

Markdown syntax consists of two main elements: inline markup and block elements. Inline markup is used to format individual words or phrases within a sentence or paragraph. Block elements are used to create larger structures such as headings, paragraphs, lists, code blocks, tables, etc.

Inline markup consists of special characters that are placed around words or phrases to indicate formatting such as bolding or italicizing them. Block elements are indicated by lines of punctuation characters at the beginning of the line followed by the content of the element on the following lines.

Markdown documents can be converted into HTML or other formats such as PDFs using various tools such as Pandoc or Marked 2 which allow users to customize their output with different themes and stylesheets. Additionally there are many online tools available for converting Markdown documents into HTML with just a few clicks such as Dillinger or StackEdit which allow users to preview their document before converting it into HTML format.