Why everyone should learn Markdown

I understand few people might feel very intimidated by Markdown formatted text but this is my story of how I learnt to live with markdown to make my work much easier.

Markdown is a lightweight markup language created by John Gruber in 2004, Markdown is now one of the world’s most popular markup languages used to create formatted text using a plain-text editor. It allows users to add formatting elements like headings, lists, and links without needing complex HTML tags, making it easy to read and write. It makes life a lot more easy for people wanting to write something but don't want to waste time on formatting, I mean I personally hate manually adjusting font sizes in MS Word while I select the text I want to modify, it is a pain.

Using markdown completely changes the way we think while we write. We do not have to worry about manual editing of text, reviewing for errors in alignment of text etc. Just learn markdown, it takes maybe 30 mins tops. You will never go back again and as a matter of fact this entire blog is made with markdown.

Markdown is also greatly helpful for note taking. I used Obsidian for note taking when I was an undergraduate but i left that out because I was not a very fast typer at that time (I'm not a fast one even now XD) and note taking with pen and paper made sense at that time.

Coming back to my graduate studies, markdown is literally everywhere, Github, Stack Overflow, Reddit etc to name a few. I can literally type and format the text as I type

The primary design goal of Markdown’s syntax is to make it as readable as possible. Based on this goal, Markdown documents can be published as plain text without looking like they’re filled with tags or formatting instructions. — John Gruber

It is:

  • super simple to learn.
  • incredibly readable.
  • ultra-portable.
  • amazingly flexible.
  • fast to write.
  • it’s everywhere.

Markdown might seem like just another tech thing at first, but it’s really about making writing and formatting simpler and more intuitive.

It gets out of your way, so you can focus on your ideas.

Why not give it a try? Open a plain text editor (like Notepad on Windows, or TextEdit on Mac in plain text mode) and try writing a few lines You might be surprised how quickly you pick it up, and how much you enjoy the clarity.

You can learn about markdown from here