Learn Markdown — The basics

Photo by Chris Ried on Unsplash

Today I will help you to learn something new that will help you at work or maybe in your personal or professional projects and that is Markdown.

I will not talk you about the Markdown history because everywhere do that and this is not a 100 pages or more book about Markdown. I want to teach you the basics about Markdown, so you can star writing with Markdown after finishing this article.

First, you can write Markdown in any flat text editor like Sublime, Notepad, Notpat++, VIM, Emacs, Nano, VS Code, etc. you only need to save it with the .md file extension.

Markdown does not require an IDE like eclipse (IDE used to program in Java, Python an other programing languages), but it’s can help us with features like syntax highlighting, and an embedded viewer.

Then, lets begin.

Code Markdown with Code

I will use Visual Studio Code because with and with a twice of Markdown extensions we can have a powerful Markdown editor.

Visual Studio Code - Code Editing. Redefined

I will use “Markdown All in One” Visual Studio Code’s extension

Markdown All in One - Visual Studio Marketplace

Now, let’s start writing a new file, create a file with a name like “MiFistMarkdown.md”

Activate the preview window clicking the preview icon

You will have something like this

Headlines

Headline starts with # and you can nest it adding another #, you can nest all the header that you want, the nest level depends on the number or # simbols before your header.

# Headline 1

## Headline 2

Code

As you’ve see in the previous image, you can add code, this is easy an you have 3 ways too add code:

• Inline, warping the code with `
• In a paragraph, writing your code indented with an tab
• Warping your code between ``` (this is for multi-line code)

See it in action:

Bond & Italic

You can write BOLD texts warping it between **, and you can write ITALIC text warping it between *

**BOLD text**

*ITALIC text*

Links

Add links to yous document wit the following structure

[Link description](link URL)

Images

You can add images en your Markdown documents to help you explain something or like a evidence, to add an image use the next structure:


Using an URL


Using a file


Lists

Now is time to write the shopping list you can use a -

**Shopping list**

- Grapes

- Apples

- Mealt

- Tutorials

**Numbered list**

1. Learn MArkdown

2. Write Markdown

3. Teach Markdown

4. Be an Markdown evangelist

Tables

Tables have a special structure, first you must define the headers, then the columns proportion and finally the content

|SKU|ITEM|STOCK|

|--| — — — | — -|

|2234|Black Socks|10|

|4477|White pants|5|

|2003|Red dess|24|

These are the basic thing and concepts that you need to know about Markdown, of course there are more and advanced thing to do with Markdown, but this is an introductory tutorial.

This is all for this now, I really appreciate your time. Stay connected for the next part

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