Markdown is a lightweight markup language designed to format text in a simple and intuitive way. It is widely used in documentation, blogging, and coding environments due to its readability and ease of use. If you’ve ever written text with basic symbols to add emphasis or structure, you may have already used Markdown without realizing it!

What is Markdown?

Markdown is a text formatting syntax that allows users to apply styles such as bold, italic, code snippets, and more using just plain text. Unlike traditional word processors that require clicking buttons to format text, Markdown relies on simple symbols and characters to indicate different formatting styles.

For example:

**Bold Text**	Bold Text
*Italic Text*	Italic Text
‘Inline Code’	Inline Code
[Link Text](https://12Boom.com)	Link Text
<https://www.12Boom.com&gt;	https://www.12Boom.com
~~Strikethrough~~	Strikethrough

You can also combine markdown functions to create varied results!

***Bold and Italic***	Bold and Italic
**[Bold Link](https://12Boom.com)**	Bold Link

You can use markdown to format your messages, too. There are various ways of doing it!

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Headings with Markdown

To help format your article/post, you can use Markdown to create headers, helping to keep things looking a little more organised. To do this, you’ll need to put a hashtag “#” before the Heading title.

Heading Size 1

To create various Heading sizes, use this: # Heading Size 1

Heading Size 2

You can create smaller heading sizes using: ## Heading Size 2

Heading Size 3

And naturally, another hashtag will make it smaller: ### Heading Size 3

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Blockquotes with Markdown

Blockquotes are another great formatting tool to help keep things a little more organised. To use these, you’ll want to use the “>” character, like so:

> Welcome to 12Boom! This is a Blockquote.

This creates…

You can also double these up and combine them, to make something like…

> Welcome to 12Boom! This is a Blockquote.
>
>> Hopefully this serves as a good demonstration of how to use them!

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Lists with Markdown

Creating lists with markdown is incredible simple! Here’s how you can create bulleted lists:

– Option 1
– Option 2
– Option 3
– Option 4

That will create something like this:

If you’d rather have numbered lists, you can use a very simple number format:

1. Option 1
2. Option 2
3. Option 3
4. Option 4

This creates:

Combine these with additional indents, and you’ll be able to expand on these, like so…

1. Option 1
1. Additional Option
2. Option 2
1. Additional Option

– Option 1
– Additional Option
– Option 2
– Additional Option

This creates…

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Inserting Images with Markdown

If you’d like to insert an image with Markdown (doesn’t work for every platform due to their own restrictions), you can use use this format:


This is broken down into three segments. Before you start, add a “!”.

The first segment is the “Alt Text”, inside of the brackets “[]”. In this case, the Alt Text is “Here’s A Sample Image!”.

Then, in parenthesis (round brackets) “()”, insert the direct URL for the image. Make sure that it ends with the format – this one is “.jpg”. The full link for our image is “https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/Square_200x200.png”.

Then, you have the option to add an title to the image in quotations. Ours is “This Is A Sample”.

When you put it all together, you ge this beautiful image. You may notice it’s a little large – to change this, you’ll need to use HTML, CSS, or a combination of the two.

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So… Where is Markdown Used?

Markdown is commonly used across various platforms and tools. For a better understanding of Markdown and its benefits, we can’t recommend this book enough:

For now – here’s where Markdown is most commonly used:

1. GitHub & Version Control Platforms

• Markdown is the default format for README.md files, which provide project documentation in repositories.
• Issue trackers and comments in GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket support Markdown for formatting.

2. Blogging & Content Management Systems

• Many blogging platforms, such as Jekyll, Ghost, and Hugo, use Markdown to simplify content creation.
• Medium and WordPress support Markdown for formatting blog posts.

3. Documentation & Note-Taking Apps

• Markdown is widely used in documentation tools like MkDocs, Docusaurus, and ReadTheDocs.
• Popular note-taking apps like Obsidian, Notion, Bear, and Typora allow users to write in Markdown.

4. Chat & Messaging Apps

• Platforms like Slack, Discord, and Microsoft Teams support Markdown-like syntax for text formatting.

5. Static Site Generators

• Tools like Gatsby and Hugo use Markdown to create static web pages efficiently.

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