Getting started with Markdown on GitHub

Today I'm going to teach you everything you need to know to get started with Markdown. [music] Markdown is an essential skill that will transform how you write. By the end of this video, you understand all the essential Markdown concepts you need to write a great readme, format issues and pull requests, and make your project easier for others to explore. Hey, [music] I'm Kadesha and I'm so excited that you're here with me today. I have my friend Emily here with me to tell us about why Markdown is worth learning, especially as you're getting started [music] on GitHub. Markdown is a lightweight language for formatting plain text. You can use Markdown syntax along with some additional HTML tags to format your writing on GitHub in places like repository readmes and comments on pull requests and issues. Markdown allows you to create clear, readable documentation. Having a clean readme in your project or well-formatted issue can make a huge difference when someone lands on your content for the first time. And the best part is, once you get the syntax down, you'll use it in almost every project you work on. The most common place you will encounter Markdown is your repository's readme file, but Markdown goes way beyond that. You'll use Markdown in issues, pull requests, discussions, and even wikis. Anytime you write or communicate on GitHub, Markdown is there behind the scenes helping your text look clean and consistent. Markdown even extends beyond GitHub to modern note-taking apps, blog platforms, and documentation tools. So, let's take a look at the core Markdown features that you'll use the most. Let's start [music] with text formatting. First up, headers. These are your titles and section names. You create them by adding a hash in front of your text. One for a main header, two for a subheader, and so on. If you want to emphasize your text, you can use the asterisk symbol to create italic or bold text. A single asterisk for italics text, two asterisks is for bold text, and three asterisks for both bold and italics text. You can emphasize characters within a string or multiple strings within a line of text. Sometimes you may want to quote important text, such as text from your favorite GitHub content creator. To do this, add the greater than symbol as the first character in your line of text. If you would like to quote something that spans multiple lines, you will need to add a greater than symbol at the start of each individual line. Now, let's get into something a little more involved, lists. Lists are a common way to express your steps and procedures in an ordered and unordered manner. To create an ordered list, number each element in the list, 1 2 3 etc., followed by a period after each number. This is clear to read, but what if you want to add an element between items two and three? Markdown interpreters allow you to order your items with any number and it will automatically interpret it as an ordered list from first to last. For unordered lists, start a line with either a hyphen, asterisk, or a plus sign. Markdown will render any of these characters as the start of an unordered list. If you would like to create new nested lists, whether unordered or ordered, indent four spaces to start a new indented list. And then, when you're done with the list, hit enter twice to go back to plain text. Check out the GitHub docs for a cheat sheet on formatting Markdown. You can also start practicing your Markdown skills today by visiting this repository. You learn to use Markdown to add lists, images, and links in a GitHub comment or text file. Go to gh.io/github-markdown to [music] learn more. Now, let's take a look at how to format code snippets using Markdown. Sometimes we may want to display a snippet of code in our Markdown, such as an example, steps in a procedure, or maybe as part of our project's installation process. Many Markdown interpreters render your code snippets with formatting and syntax highlighting. You can denote code in Markdown by surrounding it with the backtick character. If you have code that spans multiple lines, you can use three backtick characters to create a code block. Any characters, including spaces and new lines, between these triple backticks will be rendered as code. Finally, let's learn how to spice up our Markdown files. Links allow us to point people to helpful resources, documentation, or other pages in your project. They're written using brackets and parentheses. The text you want to display goes in the brackets, followed immediately by the URL in the parentheses. This keeps your writing clean and easy to follow. Images work almost the same way, but with one small difference. You add an exclamation point at the beginning. This is perfect for adding screenshots, diagrams, or even a project logo to your readme. And the nice thing is, on GitHub, you can even drag and drop an image into an issue or pull request and it will automatically generate the right Markdown for you. So, whether you're linking out to a tutorial or showing off a screenshot, links and images help you add that extra bit of personality and clarity to your Markdown. And that's it. You now know the basics of Markdown, including what it is, why it matters, where you can use it, and how to start writing it with confidence. Thanks so much, Emily, for showing us how to use Markdown effectively. With just a few techniques, you can [music] create clean, readable documentation that makes your GitHub projects stand out. Whether you're building a readme, opening an issue, or writing project notes, Markdown is going to be one of your most used tools. I hope you found this video helpful. [music] Remember to subscribe to GitHub's YouTube channel so you don't miss any of our future uploads, and share with a dev [music] friend who could use this knowledge. Happy coding.