Markdown Course
Master Markdown for writing beautiful documentation, README files, and content. Learn the syntax used across GitHub, blogs, and technical writing.
Learn Markdown — the simple formatting syntax for READMEs, docs and notes — with quick, practical, beginner-friendly lessons.
New to Markdown? Learn it in under an hour.
Start with Lesson 1 — Introduction to Markdown. It's the quickest course on the site and immediately useful for any developer.
Continue where you left off
Lessons in this course
- Introduction to Markdown — What Markdown is, where it's used, and why developers love it
- Basic Formatting — Headings, bold, italic, inline code, and blockquotes
- Lists and Tables — Create ordered and unordered lists, nested items, and data tables
- Links and Images — Insert hyperlinks, embed images, and link to page sections
- Advanced Markdown Features — Code blocks with syntax highlighting, task lists, footnotes, and GitHub-flavoured Markdown
- YAML Front Matter — Add structured metadata with the --- block used by static site generators
- Diagrams with Mermaid — Draw flowcharts, sequence and other diagrams from text in Markdown
- Math with LaTeX — Write inline and block equations rendered by KaTeX or MathJax
- Markdown Flavors: GFM vs CommonMark — How CommonMark, GitHub Flavored Markdown and others differ — and writing portable docs
- Publishing with MkDocs, Hugo and Jekyll — Turn Markdown into documentation sites and blogs with static site generators
- Writing Accessible Markdown — Heading hierarchy, descriptive links and alt text for screen-reader-friendly docs
Frequently asked questions
What is Markdown used for?
Markdown is a simple formatting syntax for writing README files, documentation, notes, blog posts and forum comments. It converts plain text into formatted HTML and is used across GitHub, Reddit, Discord and many writing tools.
How long does it take to learn Markdown?
Markdown is so simple you can learn the essentials — headings, bold, lists, links and code blocks — in under an hour. This course covers everything you need to write clean, professional documents.
Is Markdown a programming language?
No. Markdown is a formatting syntax, not a language with logic, variables or loops. You write plain text with a few punctuation conventions — # for a heading, ** for bold — and a converter turns it into HTML. That is why it takes an hour to learn rather than months.
What is the difference between Markdown and HTML?
HTML is explicit and verbose: <h1>Title</h1>. Markdown is shorthand for the same thing: # Title. Markdown converts to HTML, so anything Markdown can express, HTML can too — but not the other way round, which is why most Markdown dialects let you drop raw HTML in when you need something the syntax has no shortcut for.
Why does my Markdown table not render?
Almost always the separator row. A table needs the dashed line under the header — |---|---| — and without it the whole thing renders as a paragraph full of pipe characters. The other common cause is a pipe inside a cell that has not been escaped as \\|.
Why did my line break disappear?
A single newline does not break a line in most Markdown; consecutive lines are joined into one paragraph. End the line with two spaces, or a backslash, or leave a blank line to start a new paragraph. This trips up nearly everyone once.
Do I need Markdown if I use a word processor?
If you write anything that lives in a code repository — a README, a changelog, API docs, a pull request description — then yes, because those are Markdown by convention. It also stays readable as plain text and diffs cleanly in version control, which a .docx does not.
Which Markdown flavour should I learn?
Learn CommonMark first — it is the strict, portable core that every tool understands. Then learn what GitHub Flavored Markdown adds on top: tables, task lists, strikethrough and autolinks. This course covers both and explains which is which, so your documents work outside GitHub too.
More for this course
- Markdown cheat sheet — Quick syntax reference you can scan while you code