Quick syntax reference

The default text on the left demonstrates most of what's supported, but here's every pattern in one place:

Why Markdown exists at all

Markdown was designed to be readable as plain text even before it's rendered — a line starting with # reads naturally as a heading, and text wrapped in **asterisks** reads as emphasized, even in a plain text editor with no preview. That's a deliberate contrast with something like HTML, where <h1> and <strong> tags add visual noise that gets in the way of just reading or writing the content. It's why Markdown became the default for places people write and read raw source text constantly — README files, comments, chat formatting, note-taking apps — while HTML remains the target format any Markdown eventually gets converted into for display in a browser.