What is Markdown?
if you have not already done so, please take a moment and watch this video from the previous post in this series
A markup language is simply a specified way to format text which rendering engines can then interpret and turn into various outputs. The “language of the web”, HyperText Markup Language (HTML), is one such markup specification. You can see HTML at work simply by viewing the source of any web page. There are rendering engines which turn the code into the visual representations you view in your browser.
Markdown is a simplified markup language (hence the name) originally designed to provide formatting of content while working from mobile devices where functionality and screen real estate was at a premium. In a kind of meta move Markdown allows someone to produce HTML (another markup langage) from pure text without knowing HTML.
You will find Markdown behind a lot of sites in which users can produce content, like GitHub and reddit, although it may be hidden behind a WYSIWYG editor. In the world of Hugo, this site and this post, the content is produced in Markdown.
I’ll spare a rehash of material that has been presented by those much smarter than myself and instead just point you to some original material. Take a moment to read through it and bookmark the cheatsheet for future reference. Do not worry about downloading Markdown to work with it in Hugo. Any text editor will do, Hugo will turn your Markdown text into HTML for you.
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