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Markdown ○˒｜Definition｜1st｜20251119205401-00-⌔
Markdown
Markdown1 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.1 Markdown is widely used for blogging, instant messaging, and large language models,2 and also used elsewhere in online forums, collaborative software, documentation pages, and readme files.
The initial description of Markdown3 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.4
Printed 2026-06-28.
Link to original Footnotes
Markdown Syntax “Daring Fireball – Markdown – Syntax”. 2013-06-13. “Readability, however, is emphasized above all else. A Markdown-formatted document should be publishable as-is, as plain text, without looking like it’s been marked up with tags or formatting instructions. While Markdown’s syntax has been influenced by several existing text-to-HTML filters — including Setext, atx, Textile, reStructuredText, Grutatext, and EtText — the single biggest source of inspiration for Markdown’s syntax is the format of plain text email.” ↩ ↩2
Dillet, Romain (6 March 2025). “Mistral adds a new API that turns any PDF document into an AI-ready Markdown file”. TechCrunch. Retrieved 7 September 2025. ↩
“Daring Fireball: Introducing Markdown”. daringfireball.net. Archived from the original on 2020-09-20. Retrieved 2020-09-23. ↩
Atwood, Jeff (2012-10-25). “The Future of Markdown”. CodingHorror.com. Archived from the original on 2014-02-11. Retrieved 2014-04-25. ↩
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