Markdown is a way to write content for the web. It’s written in what people like to call “plaintext”, which is exactly the sort of text you’re used to writing and seeing. Plaintext is just the regular alphabet, with a few familiar symbols, like asterisks ( * ) and backticks ( ` ).

Unlike cumbersome word processing applications, text written in Markdown can be easily shared between computers, mobile phones, and people. It’s quickly becoming the writing standard for academics, scientists, writers, and many more. Websites like GitHub and reddit use Markdown to style their comments.

Formatting text in Markdown has a very gentle learning curve. It doesn’t do anything fancy like change the font size, color, or type. All you have control over is the display of the text—stuff like making things bold, creating headers, and organizing lists.

If you have ten minutes, you can learn Markdown!

In each lesson, you’ll be given an introduction to a single Markdown concept. Then, you’ll be asked to complete several exercises with that new knowledge.

Ready? Let’s get started!