Have you ever read an article on the web and just thought to yourself how well put together the piece seemed?

From the well-spaced-out paragraphs to ordered lists, to inline links that made reading seamless, amongst others.

Well, kudos to lightweight markup languages, (you probably know one of them as HTML) you can write on the web using plain text which is exactly the sort of text you’re used to writing and seeing. The plain text is just the regular alphabet, with a few familiar symbols like asterisks (*) and underscores (_).

Another lightweight markup language is the reStructured Text. The reStructured Text is the default plaintext markup language used by Sphinx. it is designed to be both (a) processable by documentation-processing software such as Docutils, and (b) easily readable by human programmers who are reading and writing Python source code.

There is, however, a cool lightweight markup language that I just discovered (even though it's been around since 2004) and it's called Markdown. Markdown is a lightweight markup language for creating formatted text using a plain-text editor. Markdown is widely used in blogging, instant messaging, online forums, collaborative software, documentation pages, and readme files.

I recently stumbled on a tutorial on how to write with markdowns and after taking the exercises - and passing them lol, I just had to share.

Some markdowns concepts

• Italics

Ordinarily, to italicize a word, all you have to do is highlight and click on the italics icon or simply press ctrl+I right?

Well, you don't have that option when writing code now, do you?

Using markdowns, what you have to do is place an underscore (_) before and after the word you wish to italicize.

Like this;

To italicize 'boy', write ' _boy_ ' to get boy.

• Bold

To bolden your texts the 'markdown' way all you have to do is put a double asterisk (**) before and after your word.

Like this;

To bolden 'girl', write **girl** to get girl.

Bonus tip: You can write words in italics and bold in the same sentence if you apply the elements correctly. Example;

I applied the elements correctly.

You can also apply both elements to the same word! Just place the asterisk and underscore immediately before the word and then place the underscore immediately after the word followed by the asterisk. Example;

**_Example_** = Example.

• Headings

To create a heading while using markdown, all you have to do is put a hash sign (#) in front of the heading. The less hash, the bigger the headline. There are six sizes of headers but here is what three of them look like;

#Heading1 =

Heading1

##Heading2 =

Heading2

and heading3 =

Heading3.

• Link

Did you notice what I did in paragraph 5 of this article above where I explained markdown? Okay, let's assume you missed it, try clicking on the header of this paragraph titled, 'link'.

You see that it can take you elsewhere, yes? These are called in-line text links.

In-line text links make it easy for you to add hyperlinks to your article without disrupting the flow of the reader. Simply wrap the text you want to use as a link with brackets '[]' and wrap the actual link close to it with parenthesis '()'.

So instead of having a sentence like this;

For further reading click here, markdowntutorial.com

Using Markdown, you can do this;

For further reading click [here,](markdowntutorial.com )

and this would be the result;

For further reading click here.

Cool right? I know!

• Images

Images are easy to create once you know how to write inline text links. The only difference between links and images is that images are prefaced with an exclamation point ( ! ).

One way to create an image is to use the inline image link style. To create an inline image link, enter an exclamation point ( ! ), wrap the alt text in brackets '[]', and then wrap the link in parenthesis '()'. (The alt text is a phrase or sentence that describes the image for the visually impaired.)

For example, to create an inline image link to https://i.insider.com/53a059766bb3f7c4070bc502?width=1200, with an alt text that says, A hummingbird, you'd write this in Markdown:

 =

• Blockquote

This is another way to write, using markdown, that makes an article look cool. A blockquote is a sentence or paragraph that's been specially formatted to draw attention to the reader. To create a blockquote simply place the greater than sign, caret, (>) before the sentence and this will be the esult;

\> This is the result =

This is the result

• List

To make lists using markdown depends on whether you want to make an ordered on an unordered list. To make an unordered list, just place an asterisk in front of the items, each on a separate line. So if you had words like; italics, bold, heading, and link and you wanted to list them, they'd look somewhat like this using markdown;

* Italicize
* Bold
* Heading
* Link

which would become;

• Italics

• Bold

• Heading

• Link

To make an ordered list, however, simply preface it with numbers, instead of asterisks.

Hence;

1. Italics

2. Bold

3. Heading

4. Link

Here's a little exercise for you as we come to the end of this article, answer it mentally wihtout scrolling back up;

'Make this sentence a Bold Italized Heading4' inline link that takes you to this site markdowntutorial.com.

What elements are you using and where?

Let me know if this article was helpful to you in the comment section.