File:Markdown-mark.svg · Wikimedia Commons · See Wikimedia Commons
Q1193600
Sign in to saveAlso known as markdown
Markdown is a lightweight markup language for creating formatted text using a plain-text editor. John Gruber created Markdown in 2004 as an easy-to-read markup language. Markdown is widely used for blogging, instant messaging, and large language models, and also used elsewhere in online forums, collaborative software, documentation pages, and readme files.
Key facts
- File format.name
- CommonMark
- File format.logo
- Markdown-mark.svgclass=skin-invert
- File format.icon_size
- 80px
- File format.extensions
- .md, .markdown
- File format._nomimecode
- on
- File format._noextcode
- on
- File format.mime
- text/markdown; variant=CommonMark
- File format.uniform type
- uncertain
- File format.conforms_to
- public.plain-text
- File format.magic
- None
- File format.latest release version
- 0.31.2
- File format.genre
- Markup language
- File format.extended to
- GitHub Flavored Markdown
- File format.type
- Open file format
- File format.conforms to
- public.plain-text
- File format.owner
- John MacFarlane, open source
- File format.extended from
- Markdown
via Wikipedia infobox
Official website
Daring Fireball: Markdown
daringfireball.net →Link to the official site · 9,851 chars · not written by Vinony
Described at
TAPoR
tapor.ca →Link to a page describing this subject · 2,028 chars · not written by Vinony
~9 min read
Encyclopedic overview
13 sectionsContents
- History
- Rise and divergence
- Standardization
- Variants
- <span id="GFM">GitHub Flavored Markdown</span>
- Markdown Extra
- Examples
- =
- Implementations
- See also
- Explanatory notes
- References
- External links
Markdown is a lightweight markup language for creating formatted text using a plain-text editor. John Gruber created Markdown in 2004 as an easy-to-read markup language. Markdown is widely used for blogging, instant messaging, and large language models, and also used elsewhere in online forums, collaborative software, documentation pages, and readme files.
The initial description of Markdown contained ambiguities and raised unanswered questions, causing implementations to both intentionally and accidentally diverge from the original version. This was addressed in 2014 when long-standing Markdown contributors released CommonMark, an unambiguous specification and test suite for Markdown.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Q1193600” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.