Documentation Site Guide | Using Markdown

Markdown Basics

Markdown is a lightweight Markup language. A Markup language is an annotation system for text that makes that text machine-readable. Markdown is designed to be easy to read, write, and edit using a limited set of punctuation characters to annotate the text. It is a plain text format; it does not specify color, font, or other style elements. docs.rockarch.org requires that documentation be created in or converted to Markdown. This contributes to documentation portability, intentional and consistent formatting for web content, and easy conversion to HTML and other formats.

Learn Markdown: Guides and Resources

  1. Mastering Markdown GitHub Guide. Quick reference for Markdown basics.
  2. Ghost Blogpost. How to Write Faster, Better & Longer: The Ultimate Guide to Markdown
  3. CommonMark specification with quick guide and tutorial.
  4. Markdown tutorial from Garen Torikian.

Convert and Edit Files

Tools that will convert files from DOCX to Markdown, or between Markdown and other formats:

  1. Dillinger
  2. StackEdit
  3. Writage. A Microsoft Word plugin that allows DOCX files to be saved as Markdown. Download the plugin, open the document in Microsoft Word, Save As, and choose Markdown from the Save As Type dropdown menu.
  4. Sublime. A text editor that can be installed and used to create, view, and edit Markdown files.