What is Markdown? - BrandonGoff/communicate-using-markdown GitHub Wiki
What Markdown is.
The complicated answer is Markdown for GitHub is one of many markdown "languages". This doesn't mean its a programming language that you could build an application with. But instead it is a format that you can write out in plain text that your website can read to tell the web browser you are viewing what you would like something to look like.
There are many other markdown languages, but they all more or less do the same thing (Ex: The overview in this wiki is made with a markdown language called "mermaid"). They allow you to write out augmentations to your text that transforms the appearance of your written content. GitHub has its own special flavor of the basic markdown formatting that lets us do a few extra things that some other websites and platforms normally would not.
The point of this section is to show that we are just scratching the surface with what we can do with markdown in this course. GitHub supports many other markdown languages that are not mentioned here as well. Once you are finished feel free to take what you learned in this course and go exploring to take your communication skills even further beyond!
What can I do with Markdown?
Imagine you are using Microsoft Word. There are many options built into Word that allow you to make changes to the appearance of your text. For example, in Word you can...
... bold, Italicize, strikethrough, ...
- ...and
- even
- make
- lists ...
... that can make your work stand out and elevate your writing. Markdown can do all these things (everything in this wiki is made using Markdown) and even more! However, instead of selecting changes to make to your text like you do in the top ribbon of options like in Word, Markdown lets you write out in plain text how you want your content to appear.
For instance, to make the above example appear the way it does I wrote this...
... **bold**, _Italicize_, ~strikethrough~, ...
- [ ] ...and
- [ ] even
- [ ] make
- [ ] lists ...
From here the website interprets what you want from the formatting surrounding what you wrote and then tells the web browser what to display. This means we have a lot more options than just making something bold or making a list. We can embed links, images, gifs, diagrams, and so much more.
How do I do the Markdown things?
This bar at the top of your text box in GitHub will load in a few basic outlines of markdown formatting for you to fill in with your own content.
This is no different from typing out the same characters yourself and is a useful tool that can help you understand the course material better. While completing the material still try and do your best to make things look the way you want using markdown notation before using these loadouts. It is good practice and will help you get better at markdown much faster as well as translate to a more familiar experience should you ever choose to explore the vast world of markdown later once you are done here.