Markdown is a lightweight markup language that many technical professionals use to create and edit technical documents. With Markdown, you write text in a plain text editor (such as vi or Emacs), inserting special characters to create headers, boldface, bullets, and so on. For example, the following example shows a simple technical document formatted with Markdown:
## bash and ksh
**bash** closely resembles an older shell named **ksh**. The key
*practical* difference between the two shells is as follows:
* More people know bash than ksh, so it is easier to get help for bash
problems than ksh problems.
The rendered version of the preceding technical document looks as follows:
bash and ksh
bash closely resembles an older shell named ksh. The key practical difference between the two shells is as follows:
- More people know bash than ksh, so it is easier to get help for bash problems than ksh problems.
A Markdown parser converts Markdown files into HTML. Browsers can then display the resulting HTML to readers.
We recommend becoming comfortable with Markdown by taking one of the following tutorials:
What's next?
Congratulations: you've completed the pre-class work for Technical Writing One.
If the in-class portion of Technical Writing One is available in your organization, please take it. If you'd like to facilitate the in-class portion of Technical Writing One, see the facilitator's guide.
A quick compilation of the topics covered in Technical Writing One is available on the Summary page.