Markdown is a widely used format for quickly creating rich document files in a plain-text editors or note taking apps such as Obsidian and Notion. Created by John Gruber and Aaron Swartz in 2004, the format is particular useful for documenting software, writing blog posts, eBook formatting and building out simple website templates.
Why Markdown?
Markdown documents have been increasing significantly in popularity over the last few years:
Increasingly Markdown is becoming a popular format for:
- Writing Blog Posts: Blogging platforms like WordPress, Ghost, and Jekyll support Markdown. This allows you to focus on writing content rather than messing with complex formatting.
- Documenting Software: Markdown is often used to write README files and other documentation for software projects on platforms like GitHub, Bitbucket, and GitLab.
- Academic Writing: Some scientific journals and tools like Jupyter Notebook for data science support Markdown, allowing you to write academic papers or reports.
- Taking Notes: Due to its simplicity, Markdown is a great choice for note-taking. There are even Markdown editors like Typora or Bear that are designed specifically for this purpose.
- Creating Presentations: With tools like Remark.js or Marp, you can write presentations in Markdown and then display them as slides.
How do I convert Markdown to other formats?
Sometimes you need to share your Markdown files in other formats. Many popular Markdown editors have limited support for exporting, but you can use Zamzar’s online file conversion tool to convert MD files to Word, PDF, HTML and more (without needing to download any software).
You can convert your MD document to the following formats using Zamzar’s Markdown converter:
- doc – Microsoft Word Document
- docx – Microsoft Word 2007 Document
- epub – Open eBook File
- html – Hypertext Markup Language
- odt – OpenDocument text
- pdf – Portable Document Format
- rtf – Rich Text Format
- tex – LaTeX Document
Happy Converting!