What Is Markdown? A Beginner's Guide

Markdown is a lightweight way to format text using plain characters. It's everywhere — GitHub, Reddit, Discord, note apps and static sites.

The basics

• # Heading makes a heading
• **bold** makes bold
• *italic* makes italic
• - item makes a bullet list
• [text](url) makes a link

Why writers love it

You format as you type, without reaching for a mouse — and the result is clean, portable text that converts easily to HTML.

Try it live

Our Markdown to HTML tool shows a live preview and gives you clean HTML to copy. Writing for the web? The Meta Tag Generator helps your page get found.