The benefits of Markdown

Markdown put simply is a text-to-HTML conversion tool for web writers. Markdown allows you to write using an easy-to-read, easy-to-write plain text format, then convert it to structurally valid XHTML (or HTML).

With a syntax which is very easy to read and extend, Markdown has grown in popularity in Web applications. Used from Documentation to Blog posts its hard to find an web based application which is not utilizing the power and speed of Markdown.

Some benefits include:

Speed

It's a fact that writing Markdown is far quicker than HTML. Eg:

Typing:

# my heading

is faster than typing:

<h1>my heading</h1>

And typing:

[google.com](https://google.com)

is faster than typing:

<a href="https://google.com">google.com</a>

Easy to learn

Markdown is just so easy to learn and there are many cheatsheets to get you started. Once you get the hang of it, writing Markdown becomes second nature.

Popular

The popularity of Markdown has meant that taking the time to learn the syntax is now a skill which can be used across many applications. Its well worth spending a few minutes to use a Markdown playground to practice with a visual output.

Readability

One of the hidden benefits of markdown is that its very readable in its raw state before being converted to HTML to be viewed in a browser. Due to the lack of tags in the syntax, you can read fluently and easily making it easier to read and edit.

Who uses it?

Many applications across the web use Markdown including squido, Github and many others.

squido format allows both Markdown and HTML in documents allowing for the full benefits of both. If something cannot be done in Markdown for whatever reason, you can simply write it in HTML and it will be rendered without any issues.