Markdown

Markdown is a lightweight markup language that is known for its simplicity and ease of use for writing structured documents. It was created in 2004 by John Gruber, with significant contributions from Aaron Swartz. Gruber wanted to create a plain-text format that could be easily converted to structurally valid HTML. His goal was to develop a syntax that was both human-readable and easy to write, as opposed to the verbose nature of HTML. The resulting Markdown consists of two components: a plain text formatting syntax, and a software tool that converts the plain text to HTML. 

The first Markdown version was released as an open-source project and was quickly adopted by bloggers and people working with wikis. Today it is widely used by platforms like GitHub (as README files), Reddit, Stack Overflow, and Discord. Markdown’s readability and ease of use make it popular in a variety of domains, including web content creation, software documentation, note-taking and manuscript writing. It allows bloggers, journalists, developers and authors to create documents for the web without needing a deep understanding of HTML or CSS, as Markdown files can easily be converted into fully formatted documents. 

While Markdown is widely used, there isn’t a universally accepted standard specification for its syntax. The exact implementation can differ across platforms and versions. Markdown parsers and implementations may interpret the same input differently, leading to potential difficulties when moving content across platforms or converting them into different formats. For example, certain Markdown features, such as code blocks, images and footnotes, may be rendered differently on Github versus a personal website using a different Markdown processor. Note that these rendering differences don’t affect the content of the Markdown file, just the layout.  

Interpretations can also differ across different Markdown parsers. This has led to the development of slightly different Markdown syntax variations that you can refer to as flavors or dialects. The vast majority of the syntax will be the same across dialects, so don’t worry about it too much. The dialects may differ in which features are supported (such as tables or math blocks), and may handle ambiguities differently. DANS accepts any markdown dialect. 

A Markdown document can have a .md or .markdown extension. 

Markdown is a preferred file format for file type Markup Language.

© DANS. R.5.5.T.3.P.7 Version 1.0, January 17, 2025