Markdown guide · Getting started

What Markdown is

Plain text with a few symbols that mean “make this a heading” or “make this bold”.

Markdown is a way of formatting writing using ordinary characters. A # at the start of a line makes a heading, **two asterisks** around a word make it bold, and a - starts a bulleted list. The file stays plain text, so it opens anywhere and never locks you into one app.

# Trip notes

We leave on **Friday** at 9:00.

- Passports
- Chargers
- Snacks

Prosedown shows the result as you write, like a word processor. You rarely need to type the symbols yourself: the toolbar and keyboard shortcuts add them for you. Knowing them still helps when you read a .md file somewhere else, such as on GitHub.