Writing in markdown - A Beginner's Guide to Markdown
Below is an article I was writing (in markdown of course!) to deliver to a friend and my business partner. He recently sent me some content he’d written and, unfortunatly, it’s a pain to convert from PDF. So I decided to offer an alternatives.
As I was preparing to convert this to PDF for him to read I figured why not post it here and send him the link
Maybe someone else will get some use from this?
Why Use Markdown
The simple reasons are:
- It’s easy!
- Markdown can be converted to almost anything: Word, PDF, HTML (webpages), and much more!
- Plain text can be entered into source control. This means we can track changes directly.
- It’s FREE!
- It’s forward compatible indefinitely.
Let’s break a few of these down a bit more!
It’s Easy
HTML is a complicated language for a human to type when writing structured text. It’s challenging to write in a natural flow. You’d need to stop and look up code sometimes. A simple HTML heading looks like this: <h1>This is an H1 Heading</h1>, but things can get much more complicated quickly.
HTML generally requires opening and closing tags. If you forget a closing tag, you risk formatting issues on the page. Finally, HTML isn’t always easy to convert to other formats.
For reference, the same heading is simple in Markdown:# This is an H1 Heading
See how easy that was?
Markdown Can Be Converted to Almost Anything
Markdown benefits from its simplification. It’s a markup language that can be easily converted to pretty much anything: PDF, HTML, Word, and many others. Most other document formats aren’t as easy to convert in reverse. For instance, Word documents can be converted to Markdown, but not always cleanly — converters sometimes produce weird markup that needs fixing.
PDFs are very hard to convert cleanly to Markdown (though modern AI-powered tools in 2026 can do a surprisingly good job on many documents, especially text-based ones — complex layouts, tables, or scanned PDFs may still require manual cleanup). Conversions from PDF to Word (or Word to PDF) aren’t always perfect either.
Plain Text Can Be Managed in Source Control
Markup languages like Markdown are plain text, nothing more. They exist as simple text files. This means no specialized software is needed to read them — unlike PDF, .doc, or .docx files, which often require proprietary software and are binary formats. Binary files don’t work well in source control (changes are hard to track and diffs look like gibberish).
Plain text files, on the other hand, work great in source control. Source control lets us use software to track changes over time. For our purposes today, the key benefit is that it’s especially helpful when writing and refining documents over time.
Source control is particularly important for some websites. This website (my personal blog) is written in plain text using Markdown and stored in source control.
It’s Free
Since there’s no proprietary software required to work with Markdown, any computer can read and edit it. It’s just plain text — no binary files, no licenses needed. This makes the process completely free. You could use any old text editor, such as the free Notepad that comes with Windows computers, or really anything else.
It’s Forward Compatible Indefinitely
Along the same lines, because it’s just plain text, Markdown is completely forward compatible. You could print the file contents out and read them like a book, and until we stop reading words on a screen (and probably long after), Markdown will remain fully readable.
Try opening a Word document from 1997 in a modern version of Word today — it might open in compatibility mode, but formatting can break, especially on complex files. You might need converters, and corruption is possible. A Markdown document has far less chance of becoming unreadable.
So How Does Markdown Work?
It’s quite simple. You use a few special characters as “markup” to indicate headings, lists, links, and more.
Headings
Headings are important for documents and websites alike. They provide a visual break in otherwise monotonous text and play a huge role in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for websites. You’ll notice them as larger, bolder text in documents or on sites.
In Markdown, headings are easy:
# Heading 1
## Heading 2
### Heading 3
#### Heading 4
Lists
There are two main types of lists:
- Unordered lists
- Ordered lists
Unordered Lists
These are usually shown as bullets:
- This is a list item
- You'll see bullets
- And we can go on
- And on
- And on...
This renders as:
- This is a list item
- You’ll see bullets
- And we can go on
- And on
- And on…
Ordered Lists
These are numbered:
1. First list item
2. Second list item
3. Third, etc.
4. Fourth...
This renders as:
- First list item
- Second list item
- Third, etc.
- Fourth…
Links
Links usually take this form (the most common syntax):
[text displayed for the link](https://FightClubLiveTV.com/)
This becomes a clickable link: text displayed for the link
The displayed text turns into a hyperlink in Markdown viewers or when converted to other formats.
Images
Images are the only slightly more involved part, but still straightforward.
This inserts an image like so:
Side note: The text “Mountain Trail in New Mexico!” is the alt text in HTML. It’s designed to describe the image for screen readers (essential for accessibility for the visually impaired), helps search engines understand the image for SEO, and shows up if the image fails to load.
Conclusion
So why go through all this? Truthfully, it’s really simple, but it also enables web developers (and writers like us) to inject new content quickly.
When you send a PDF or DOCX file of content, we need to convert it to a usable web format — mainly HTML. As we covered, HTML isn’t easy to write unless you’re specifically coding it. It doesn’t flow like an article or book.
The alternative is posting the PDF or DOC for download, but that has its own limitations:
- Search engines are unlikely to index the content well, so it’s useless for SEO.
- Most people won’t bother downloading it.
- It takes up more space on the web server.
- Both formats are hard to read comfortably on mobile devices.
Markdown, on the other hand, can be quickly and easily converted to HTML — often automatically. The website you’re reading this on (my personal blog) is 100% Markdown content. Every article here was written in Markdown, and the publishing process automatically converts it to HTML for your browser.
Getting Started with Markdown
How do you get started? It’s easy. Open Notepad on Windows, TextEdit on Mac, or any text editor and start writing. You won’t see the formatted preview right away, but it’ll look something like this:
# This is a heading
Good afternoon, reader! I hope you're learning something useful today!
## Markdown is awesome
For:
- Ease of writing
- Ease of transport
- Backup
- Source control
- Zero costs
- Easy conversions
And that’s perfectly okay!
If you’re using Markdown for a website that supports it or plan to convert it later, it doesn’t have to look pretty on your machine. The markup is what matters.
Just save your files as filename.md.
But…
If you want it to look nice while editing, use a dedicated Markdown editor with live preview. Here are a few good ones (I focused on Mac-friendly options since this is for my friend/partner, but Windows/Linux users can search for equivalents):
- Typora — One-time purchase (~$15 lifetime license after a free 15-day trial)
- MacDown — Free and open-source
- MarkEdit — Free on the Mac App Store
Don’t
One major thing to avoid:
Don’t write or edit Markdown inside a word processor like Microsoft Word.
It’s like trying to unscramble shredded paper — once it’s processed into Word’s format, you lose the clean, plain-text benefits.
The Final Conclusion
Markdown is powerful. It makes formatted text easier to write, transmit, store, and convert — especially in the web world.
You can even copy and paste it without losing formatting!
Hope you found this helpful!