# Getting started with Markdown

Markdown is an intentionally simple, readable markup language.  It takes
many of its ideas from common formatting conventions in email, such as
using blank lines to indicate paragraph breaks, or underscores to wrap
_emphasized text_.

In general, a markup language is a set of plain text markers that you add to
a plain text document to provide formatting information.  HTML and LaTeX
are two examples of markup languages.  Whereas in HTML, the source file is
littered with directives in angle brackets, the "markup" information in
Markdown is so simple that the source file remains easy to read.

A few examples are:
  - # This is a top-level heading, introduced with a single #
  - ## This is a second-level heading, introduced with two # symbols
  - Single underscores (or single asterisks) wrapping a word or phrase
    will cause it to be _emphasized_; double underscores or asterisks
    cause a word to be **strong**.
  - Lists can be created by just starting each item with a hyphen (or plus sign
    or asterisk) followed by a space or tab. The symbol is generally at the
    left margin or indented 1 or 2 characters.
  - Ordered list items start with a number, period, and space (1. item)

For more information about Markdown, see [https://guides.github.com/features/mastering-markdown/](https://guides.github.com/features/mastering-markdown/) or [https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax[(https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax).

There is a Markdown extension for VS Code (and similar extensions for many
other text and code editors) for writing and previewing Markdown files.  There
are also browser extensions for seeing Markdown files nicely formatted.