Markdown is a lightweight markup language. It is a style of writing documents that makes it easy to define what the content should look like. It’s a set of rules that describes how text should show up on a page. It defines headers, text styles, links, lists, and so much more. Markdown is used all over the place. It is used in documentation, articles, notes, and can even be used to build static websites. I use it to write Code docs, blog articles, take notes.

Markdown is easier to write than HTML, and it's easier for most humans to read Markdown source than HTML source. However, HTML is more expressive (particularly regarding semantic tagging) and can achieve some specific effects that might be difficult or impossible in Markdown. For example, you might have to switch to using the HTML <code> element for special characters in code such as nonbreaking spaces.

If you use GitHub, you’ll be familiar with the README[dot]md files that show up in the root of a repository. The .md stands for Markdown. You can even create a README on your GitHub profile to really customize your profile page. In this course you will also be looking at some GitHub's README specific markdown syntax/rules.