Learn Markdown in 5 Minutes
An often overlooked but highly important task is documentation. It's easy to type up a few paragraphs to help spread knowledge but to really make it readable and easy to consume you're going to need Markdown.
Markdown is composed of a set of annotations you add to your document that formats your content.
Here are the most important annotations that you should be using.
Headings
Headings are created by starting a new line with a series of #s. The more #s the smaller the heading.
# Header 1
## Header 2
### Header 3
#### Header 4
##### Header 5
###### Header 6
Header 1
Header 2
Header 3
Header 4
Header 5
Header 6
Breaks
You can insert breaks (the solid horizontal lines) by typing ---. You will usually need a blank line before and after as well.
This would render a page break below this line.
---
And above this line.
It's a great way to structure content.
Text Styling
You can easily use italic,
bold, and monospace text decorations.
You can easily use _italic_,
**bold**, and `monospace` text decorations.
Lists
Bullets:
- apples
- oranges
- pears
* apples
* oranges
* pears
Numbers:
- lather
- rinse
- repeat
1. lather
2. rinse
3. repeat
Styling Code
Inline code can be wrapped in backticks.
Code blocks are wrapped in 3 backticks.
Hello World!
Links
An example.
An [example](http://example.com).
Images
Wrapping Up
The best part about Markdown is that it's optional. You don't need to memorize every possible annotation, and even if you want to there are only a handful of them. Try out a new annotation every so often and pretty soon you'll be pushing out the cleanest, most well-organized docs and your peers will definitely notice.