Markdown Basics
Introduction
We're almost ready to start building content that we can put on the web! The next step is to learn a simple language that will allow us to easily translate plain text content into valid HTML (Hypertext Markup Language, which is the syntax the web expects files to use to display them properly). The language we will learn is called Markdown.
You can write a Markdown file using your plain text editor. Unless you've downloaded a special editor like Visual Studio Code, Atom, or Sublime Text, you will probably want to use Notepad on Windows or TextEdit on Mac. In the tutorial below, you'll learn the special characters to use that will allow your plain text document to be marked up to valid HTML. All you have to do is save the file you create with a .md extension, and when you put it on GitHub it will be marked up appropriately (and look really cool).
Note that if you are going to download a text editor, we recommend Visual Studio Code since that is what we use in Units 1 and 2.
Exercises
Work through all the exercises in this tutorial to learn the basics of Markdown. In the next lesson, we'll start building a resume using Markdown!
Bonus Mission!
Check out this site from the founder of Markdown for more info on usage.