#Markdown Tutorial ##by Ethan Berman
####Why Should I Use Markdown?
- Because it is readable! Imagine a world where microsoft and apple go out of business and the normal word processors that you are accustomed to using are no longer available for you to use. What are you to do with all of your word documents and PDFs? There is now no program for you to open them with. Okay, well the text you have written must be in the source code right? So you check that out in your terminal, but it is all strange symbols and it is not readable. This is where Markdown would be very useful if your files are in that format. Markdown files are coded in Plaintext. What does this mean? The source code is readable! For example, if you were to open a markdown file that only had the word "test" in it in your terminal, then you will see the word "test." On the contrary, if you were to view a Microsfot Word file with only the word "test" in it in your terminal, you will get strange symbols and nothing that resembles the word "test."
####Where can I find a Markdown program?
- Just google it. For Macs, I use Macdown and it has been great. For Windows you can use Markdownpad. For Linux, you can use Remarkable.
####How do I Use Markdown?
- When you open the program, most will be separated into two panes. The one on the left is where you do all of your typing, and then one on the right is a preview of how your text will look in markdown.
- If you format your writing nicely in Markdown, it comes out looking professional and organized. All you need to do is learn all of the commands for how to format.
- We will start with creating a heading. To create heading, surround the word with two #. To create a smaller heading, place two # around the word. To create an even smaller one, place 3 # around the word, and so on and so forth. For example, a large heading and smaller headings would look like as follows:
#Heading###Subheading#####Sub-subheading### - To bold a word , surround the word with two asterisks. For example, text that looks like the following will bold a word.
**bold** - Italicizing a word is similar to bolding a word, but instead of two asterisks it is one. For example, text that looks like the following will italicize a word.
*italicize* - To create a list, place a - with a space directly after it. After that, just continue to press enter when you want a new line for a new bullet point. It should looke like the following.
- this creates a list - Inserting a quote is easy as well. Place a > at the begging of the line you wish a quote to be on.
<At the beginning of a line, this creates a quote.> - To insert a link in the text, surround what you want the link to say in brackets then put the URL in parentheses directly after that.
[link text] (URL.com) - Inserting a footnote works
- To preserve format, as is seen when showing the examples of how to format each formatting technique, surround the text in `. Unfortunately, you can't show it because it will cancel out itself in format.
- If you would like to insert a codeblock, you must place many spaces before your text.
- In order to exit any previous commands, insert two spaces after the text.
These are the basics of markdown. If there is anything that you do not understand, or a type of text that is missing, just google it. I hope you found this helpful!