Markdown: a better way to write

This week Damashe and Michael are talking about writing. Specifically, they’ll be introducing you to Markdown, a plain text markup language, along with some tools to help reduce the fustration of formatting your documents.
Whether generating pdfs, writing for the web, or crafting email newsletters, Markdown will make the process of formatting easier. The key to Markdown is the fact that it is plain text, which means there are no proprietary document formats to deal with, and no complex applications to navigate.
Markdown uses simple markup to style your documents and the conversion process is no hassle at all. WordPress handles Markdown natively and converts to HTML for example. This post is written in Markdown. ? you didn’t even notice.
Damashe has been using Markdown for several years now, and introduced Michael to it several months back. Since then, Michael has began writing everything in Markdown, mainly using Ulysses on the Mac.
Some apps are designed around writing in Markdown, but since it is just plain text, Damashe has written numerous blog posts in Windows Wordpad. One of the nice things about markdown is that it is able to be opened and edited by any application that handles plain text, regardless of the platform.
Once your document is written, you have many options for where to go next. You can convert the file to a .rtf or word document, create a pdf, or convert to html. You still have the ability to use bold and italicized text, insert links and images, and use headings and footnotes. More importantly, when you have to go back and fix that typo, there’s no coded language to read through.
Using Markdown has benefitted both your hosts, along with untold numbers of writers, and we hope it will help your writing process too. Be sure to reach out to us on Twitter, @Damashe and @Payown, or leave a comment below.

Markdown: a better way to write

Markdown: a better way to write

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