Writing in Markdown

I write all these posts in Markdown, which is a simple way to format text using plain characters. It's much easier than HTML and keeps me focused on writing instead of formatting.

The Basics

Here's what I use most often:

Bold text with double asterisks: **bold**

Italic text with single asterisks: *italic*

Links with brackets and parentheses: [text](url)

Headers

I use hashtags for headers:

# Big Header
## Medium Header  
### Small Header

Lists

Simple lists with dashes:

First item
Second item
Third item

Or numbered lists:

First thing
Second thing
Third thing

Code

For inline code, I use backticks: console.log('hello')

For code blocks, I use three backticks:

function greet(name) {
  return `Hello, ${name}!`;
}

Quotes

For quotes, I use the greater-than symbol:

This is a quote from someone smarter than me.

That's It

Markdown keeps things simple. I can write without worrying about complex formatting, and it still looks good when published.

The best part is that markdown files are just plain text, so they'll be readable forever, no matter what publishing platform comes next.