Web writing is not only about picking the correct words. The way the content is structured and presented also plays a role in the ease with which readers can scan, comprehend, and utilize it. That is where markdown comes in handy.
Markdown is a lightweight markup language that was developed by John Gruber in 2004. Markdown lets authors add formatting elements into regular text without having to write complicated HTML or use fancy visual editors. The language has been adopted extensively in documentations, READMEs, technical writing, blogs, forums, and more.
Why? Because you can focus on your content while adding some basic symbols to structure it. Once you know how it works, it is really fast to create organized headings, lists, hyperlinks, emphasize parts of the text, and quote others.
What Is Markdown and Why Is It Important?
In essence, markdown is a mechanism for structuring plain text. Rather than choosing a heading from a menu of formats, for instance, you could use a hash tag at the start of a line.
Main Heading
Subheading
Smaller Heading
The number of hash tags denotes the level of the heading. ATX headings, which is defined by CommonMark – a common specification for the language – use between one and six opening # symbols.
There are several reasons why markdown is important. Firstly, any text that is properly formatted will be readable without being converted. Secondly, it is faster to type. And thirdly, it helps to maintain structural consistency.
Elements of Basic Formatting You Need to Learn
It is not necessary to learn a great many commands just to start formatting your documents. Several basic elements will cover most common cases.
Headings
Headings separate an article into meaningful blocks, making long pages more scannable.
How to Write Better Online Content
Planning Your Article
Choosing a Topic
Hierarchical structure allows to show how the sections correlate with each other. It is especially helpful for guides, tutorials, technical documentation, and long articles.
Text in Bold and Italic Font
Emphasis helps highlight key words and phrases in your document.
This text is written in bold font.
This text is in italic font.
In CommonMark, double asterisks denote bold text whereas single asterisks are used to denote emphasis.
Emphasize less and avoid using too much bold text in your documents as that way nothing seems important any longer.
Lists
Using lists is one of the simplest means of making hard-to-understand information easy to comprehend.
Unordered lists may be presented as follows:
- Research your topic
- Make an outline
- Write a rough draft
- Clarify the meaning
Numbered lists are best suited when there is a certain sequence of actions:
- Decide on a topic
- Find reliable information
- Write a draft
- Read and publish it
Various markers may be used for unordered lists in CommonMark, such as hyphens, asterisks, and pluses, whereas for ordered lists, numbers followed by dots or closing parentheses will do.
When it comes to online writing, lists are particularly convenient as many people scan websites before reading.
Adding Links, Images, and Quotes
Sometimes good online content requires more than just paragraphs and headers. Good news is that syntax for other useful elements is not much more complicated either.
Links
To make a link, put the readable text between square brackets and the destination between parentheses:
[Visit the website](https://example.com)
It helps keep the link text separated from the URL. It is especially useful when you would like your readers to know where exactly they will go with the link without showing the URL.
Images
Syntax for images is somewhat alike; however, an exclamation mark must be added in front of the square brackets:
The description text works as an alternative text to the image, which means that it should be descriptive and not just a word “image” or something like that.
Blockquotes
- In order to emphasize a particular quote or a significant comment, start the line with a greater-than symbol:
- Useful content needs to be practical rather than impressive.
- Blockquotes belong to the set of default block elements supported by CommonMark.
- These elements may be useful for quoting or citing other sources, but should not be used excessively.
How Markdown Will Make Your Writing Better
It’s more than just a quick way to format your writing. Markdown will force you to consider structure when writing.
As you incorporate headings, lists, and shorter paragraphs in your writing, you will find yourself thinking in terms of structuring your content in terms of the user.
You’ll avoid giving readers a wall of text and start creating a roadmap instead.
Markdown is especially helpful for:
- Blogging and writing
- Documentation
- README files
- Online tutorials
- Project notes
- Knowledge base
- Developer documentation
- Personal notes
According to IBM, the markup language is a simple HTML replacement tool that uses keyboard symbols to add features such as headings, links, and lists into plain text.
Portability is another strength of markdown. You can easily copy, store, and edit the source since it is essentially plain text. Although it’s important to keep in mind that some platforms offer different flavors or extensions of the language syntax. CommonMark is there to help with a proper specification of markdown language for parsing consistency.
Practical Guidelines for Effective Internet Writing
Mastery of syntax is one thing, but effective communication is the aim.
First, give a definite aim to each piece of writing. Define what the reader should know, understand, and achieve by the end of it.
Second, divide complex subjects into logical parts. Each meaningful heading must indicate what the reader will find under it. Do not use excessively long paragraphs since it might be too much for the screen.
Third, apply lists whenever several ideas that go together have to be expressed. Bolden those parts that contain vital information.
And finally, edit the content after the formatting. Formatting might make poor-quality text look structured, but it cannot substitute for good thoughts, reliable information, and clear explanation of them.
Mistakes You Should Avoid
Many newbies tend to concentrate so much on formatting that they forget about readability.
Using many headings is one of the frequent mistakes. A heading has to separate logical sections, not to occur after several lines. It is important to be consistent in the list formatting. Otherwise, your perfectly formatted document may become untidy because of it.
Besides, you have to pay attention to the way the content will look like in the place where you are going to post it. There might be differences in the implementation of markdown because of some extra extensions of the platform.
The most important thing is that you shouldn’t confuse formatting with the content itself.
Conclusion
Markdown provides a straightforward way of connecting simple text with rich digital content. By using only a couple of symbols, authors can format their headings, emphasize some elements, create lists, hyperlinks, images, quotes, and many other components without any need to use HTML.
As far as newbies are concerned, the best strategy would be to master the basics of the language and then try to apply it while writing actual content, starting from headings and lists and progressing to links, images, quotes, and other components.
The power of simplicity is the strength of markdown. Unlike many other formatting languages which tend to distract users by providing numerous tools, markdown enables them to concentrate on important things: effective communication of thoughts and structuring of information.
