As Markdown’s popularity grew rapidly, many Markdown implementations appeared, driven mostly by the need for additional features such as tables, footnotes, definition lists,[note 1] and Markdown inside HTML blocks. Its key design goal was readability, that the language be readable as-is, without looking like it has been marked up with tags or formatting instructions,[11] unlike text formatted with ‘heavier’ markup languages, such as Rich Text Format (RTF), HTML, or even wikitext (each of which have obvious in-line tags and formatting instructions which can make the text more difficult for humans to read). Markdown[11] is a lightweight markup language for creating formatted text using a plain-text editor. John Gruber and Aaron Swartz[3][4] created Markdown in 2004 as a markup language that is intended to be easy to read in its source code form.[11] Markdown is widely used for blogging and instant messaging, and also used elsewhere in online forums, collaborative software, documentation pages, and readme files.
- Editors may feature a side-by-side preview window or render the code directly in a WYSIWYG fashion.
- For instance, GFM now requires that the hash symbol that creates a heading be separated from the heading text by a space character.
- GitHub had been using its own variant of Markdown since as early as 2009,[37] which added support for additional formatting such as tables and nesting block content inside list elements, as well as GitHub-specific features such as auto-linking references to commits, issues, usernames, etc.
- John Gruber and Aaron Swartz[3][4] created Markdown in 2004 as a markup language that is intended to be easy to read in its source code form.[11] Markdown is widely used for blogging and instant messaging, and also used elsewhere in online forums, collaborative software, documentation pages, and readme files.
- While Markdown is a minimal markup language and is read and edited with a normal text editor, there are specially designed editors that preview the files with styles, which are available for all major platforms.
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word ‘markdown.’ Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or https://business-accounting.net/ its editors. The behavior of some of these diverged from the reference implementation, as Markdown was only characterised by an informal specification[16] and a Perl implementation for conversion to HTML.
More from Merriam-Webster on mark down
GitHub had been using its own variant of Markdown since as early as 2009,[37] which added support for additional formatting such as tables and nesting block content inside list elements, as well as GitHub-specific features such as auto-linking references to commits, issues, usernames, etc. For instance, GFM now requires that the hash symbol that creates a heading be separated from the heading text by a space character. While Markdown mark down meaning is a minimal markup language and is read and edited with a normal text editor, there are specially designed editors that preview the files with styles, which are available for all major platforms. Many general-purpose text and code editors have syntax highlighting plugins for Markdown built into them or available as optional download. Editors may feature a side-by-side preview window or render the code directly in a WYSIWYG fashion.