This simple trick will forever change the way you format digital notes

As someone who has been around the tech block a few times, I’ve seen my fair share of things that purport to make life a bit more efficient. Sometimes those things pan out, and other times, not so much.

But there’s one bit of technology that came about in 2004 that has made things easy… for those who know about it and how to use it.

That bit is called markdown, and it’s a lightweight markup language.

Also: The 4 best MacOS text editors (and why you should be using one)

Markup is all about adding special annotations or codes to plain text to convey additional information about the content. The types of markup include:

Text formatting: Bold, italic, strikethrough, etc.
Headings and titles: H1-H6 levels for headings, bold or italics for titles
Lists: Ordered or unordered lists with bullet points or numbers
Links and URLs: Hyperlinks to websites or documents
Images and media: Embedding images, videos, audio files, etc.

What is markdown?

Markdown allows you to format text using plain syntax, so it’s easier to create readable documents, emails, and even websites. I look at markdown as a more efficient method of adding markup to text. With markdown, you don’t have to go through the process of selecting text, using your mouse to click on a formatting option, and then applying the option. Instead, markdown is a text-based shorthand for formatting.

Why use markdown?

First off, there are a lot of desktop apps that make use of markdown. A good portion of note-taking apps support markdown, and knowing this shorthand can make using those apps more efficient. 

Also: My 5 favorite note-taking apps for staying organized on a desktop

The types of apps that support markdown include:

Editors (such as Typora, VS Code, Sublime Text, Atom, Notion, Evernote, Notepad++)
Viewers (such as Pandoc, Markdown Preview, Microsoft Edge, Google Docs)
Platforms (such as web browsers and mobile apps)

The benefits of using markdown are that it’s easy to use, converts automatically, and is portable (so files can be shared between devices, operating systems, and apps), and it is easily shared between devices, operating systems, or even text editors. The common use cases for markdown include blog posts and articles, emails and letters, documentation, and README files.

The gist is that markdown is used by so many apps for so many things.

How to use markdown

Using markdown is just a matter of typing and knowing the shortcuts for different types of markup. Here are some of the more popular examples.

Headings

# = Heading 1
## = Heading 2
### = Heading 3
#### = Heading 4
##### = Heading 5
###### = Heading 6

Emphasis

**This is bold text**
__This is also bold text__
*This is italic text*
_This is also italic text_

Lists

– Item 1
– Item 2
– Item 3
+ Another item
+ Yet another item
* More items here

Ordered Lists

1. First step
2. Second step
   1. Sub-step A
   2. Sub-step B
a. Item a
b. Item b
I. Roman numeral one
II. Roman numeral two

Links/Images

Example of link – [Google](https://www.google.com)
Example of image – 

Misc

Blockquote – > This is a blockquote.
Code and syntax highlighting – The function call is `print(“Hello, world!”)`.
Horizontal rule – ***, —, or ___

You can even do tables with markdown, like so:

| Column1 | Column2 |

|———|———|

| Row 1   | Data 1  |

| Row 2   | Data 2  |

# Or with alignment:

| Left Aligned | Centered | Right Aligned |

|:————-:|:——–:|————–:|

| Cell A    | Cell B | Cell C    |

And that, my **friends**, is #markdown. Make sure to keep coming back to [ZDNET](https://www.zdnet.com) for all your technology news, opinions, reviews, and how-tos.

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